Loosen up regulations for importation, though we don’t need to remove all regulations completely. I can’t really say what the regulations or changes should be, but if the drug works in Canada, it should work here. A company has a right to charge what it wants for it’s product.
Anti-price gouging laws, where they exist, are bad. They are not only inefficient but it is also a violation of rights. You have a right to charge what you want for your product or services.
What is your solution in the immediate term for patients using these drugs?
I heard this guy on the radio. He said they already gave away half of it. The price of the rest will be reduced so that they make only a small profit, he said.
They “gave away half of it” because… drum roll… they discounted the price for those individuals whose insurance did not cover the drug. So the other half can be made off the insurance companies (per Fierce Biotech).
“They are not only inefficient but it is also a violation of rights.”
Based on what? Because SCOTUS said Corporations are people? Go sue me. The Commerce Clause has been used left and right to uphold such regulations and beyond! Check your constitutional law book (you are a law student, right, Vlad?)
Fans of unfettered free marketism need to hope that its practitioners have some sense of restraint. Really extreme greed not only looks bad, but invites reforms. But alas, there are always a few super-greedy among the greedy class and, darn it, they just ruin it for everyone.
If Anthem had been content with, say, 30% increases, we probably wouldn’t now have the awful spectacle of poor and sick people being able to get insurance. But, like Mr. Scumbag, they weren’t content with the obscene amounts of money they were already making, and just had to grasp for more. Restraint, compassion, good taste, decency – these virtues would have served Anthem and Mr. Scumbag better in the end than the extra dollars they made by profiting from others’ suffering.
Maybe there will be a rush of right-minded individuals to go into biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturing in order to offer drugs at whatever the appropriate profit margin is.
What is the average profit made by a pharmaceutical company, anyway? How does it compare to other corporations such as those in the tech field, consumer goods, etc. ?
I looked up Fortune’s list of the 10 most profitable companies. Only one Johnson and Johnson is in the pharmaceutical business. The others are (in order)
Apple
Exxon Mobil
Wells Fargo
Microsoft
JP Morgan Chase
Berkshire Hathaway
Chevron
Walmart
J & J
General Electric
I find it ironic that pro-capitalism folks think that “regulation” is what’s keeping out cheap imported drugs. The only people interested in keeping out cheap imported drugs are capitalists who are selling expensive domestic drugs, and it is their lobbying that makes imports difficult.
Of course. That’s why Russia, China and Cuba have been such valuable producers of pharmaceuticals over the years.
I was inviting you and any other right-minded individuals to actually do something about it and go into pharma. We’ve had plenty of years with difficulty in the drug delivery and pricing chain with no resolution as of yet. Maybe everyone is too busy going to some kind of computer science school.
Nobody ever said Free Markets were fair, per se; what they are is efficient. When we are free single agents trading on our own behalf, unencumbered by anything but market forces, some will succeed and some will fail. Some of the reasons for failure seem unfair to most people – or, at least, not fully deserved by the person who failed.
Regulation improves the fairness factor (to some), but it usually diminishes efficiency.
Ahh, liberty and equality… why can’t we find the right balance?
And defining “fair” is a discussion for another day – we could start with the “equality of access/opportunity vs. equality of outcome” discussion, add a side of personal responsibility, and be off to verbal war. “Fair” is not easily defined.
As for the guy who temporarily raised the price, I see several possible motives:
Publicity
To soften the shock of just a, oh, 100% price increase.
To become a revolutionary of sorts, setting such a preposterously high price that, to stem the predictable outcry of everyone from the Far Left Socialists to the sane Capitalists (almost everyone...), government would have to allow foreign drugs into the US for fast-tracking onto the market at reasonable prices.
I bet if he had it all to do over again, he’d just keep it at $13…
Biotech lab work is a hard, dirty, messy labor. Most scientists in biotech I know are there not because they have dreams of getting rich quickly. These people are there because they love their science and hope that it will someday help cure someone. It takes years and thousands of molecules and rats to find the “one” Imagine planting an entire multi-acre garden of trees only to watch all of them wilt and fall to the ground. And then you nurture and water that last one, hoping that it would produce some fruit so people in need of this fruit will get it… and the tree dies before it can prioduce a single piece of fruit. This is what it feels like when the Phase III clinical trial fails to meet the objective.
Yes and so is the nicotine in the Marlboros an the caffeine in Coca-Cola and Monster. Let’s say drugs that require a prescription.
I’m surprised that Starbucks coffee wasn’t on the list. I’d always heard that coffee was a very high profit item. Or Slurpees. They are just sugar, coloring and ice.
On a national scale, probably the closest thing to a truly Free Market system is in Hong Kong or Singapore. Every national government has instituted at least some measure of regulation.
But we see the free market at work every time a non-coerced transaction takes place… so in a micro sense, it’s everywhere in the US.