Posted on 01/20/2008 4:25:45 AM PST by Aristotelian
Dammit I have Boston liberal relatives who hate me and haven't spoken to me in years because of my views and it is intensely ignorant for some people to blindly insult me with that term if I dont fall in line. I thought the intelligence level was a bit higher on this site so we could disagree and have a substantive debate without slipping into a moronic name calling contest.
“Jim Jeffords and John McCain...”
Didn’t Jeffords have the “honesty” to leave the party? Other than that, I agree with your comparison.
Do you believe McCain is the only choice?
lol
McCain is certainly not the only choice, in fact I think he will ultimately get beat by Romney. I will volunteer for and vote for any candidate we nominate in order to keep Hillary out of the white house. My motivation is the abhorant thought of 1st husband Bill Clinton strolling around the white house with his bathrobe hanging open with nothing to do but hit on interns while Hillary runs the country into the ground.
right you are, Checkers.
My post had nothing to do with President Bush. It had to do with McCain.
Look around here long enough, at people who actually vote, and see if I’m wrong. I’m not. I don’t know anyone who can stomach voting if McCain is our nominee.
Rudy and Mitt had to compromise in heavily liberal states to get anything done at all. McCain didn’t have to, we had a majority, yet all he did was run to the libs.
His record speaks for itself.
Compromise is putting it nicely. Marching in Gay pride parades and saying "I look forward to the day Gays will serve openly in the military", does not sound like a compromise.
It's full fledged support.
Of course it’s worthwhile. Most drugs are relatively cheap to manufacture — the cost is in research, development, and regulatory hoops.
So if they have a way to differentiate markets, they can sell drugs at a price which pays for their development here, and can still make money by selling additional medication in other countries.
Darn, that is one ugly picture you are painting. The sad thing is that some here think that this would teach us a lesson.
How are you going to tell the difference?
Good explanation. So which do you think is the more likely drug company response to us allowing reimportation and the extreme scenario where the entire United States gets all its drugs through Canada?
1. "Oh well, I guess we have no big R&D supporting market anymore. So I guess we'll stop all R&D, fire all our scientists, and just make money selling the drugs we already have made."
2. Take legal steps to effectively say "not for sale in Canada", at least for a certain tier of drugs, so that Canada (and, in turn, the U.S.) no longer is given those drugs at their price-controlled price. But continue selling them to the U.S. at the regular price (or slightly lower, now that we're not subsidizing Canada).
Seems a lot of people here assume that (1) is what would happen. Which, indeed, would be a shame.
However, if (2) is what happens, as I think is more realistic, then the only net effect (in what is, of course, an extreme case) would be that Canada would be deprived of drugs unless/until they give up their stupid price controls.
Seems to me that by 'not allowing' reimportation through Canada, we are effectively shielding Canada from feeling the costs of her price control laws, and at the same time (as many here have pointed out) subsidizing them with higher prices here. I'm not sure why Freepers would want to subsidize Canada's protectionist socialism and shield them from the negative effects of their socialism. Usually free markets (is not 'yes you can buy from Canadian outlets if you want' the free market answer?) are seen as the antidote to socialism, and I don't see why this should be an exception. The negative effect of a price control law is supposed to be that you don't get enough of the good in question, i.e. supply doesn't meet demand.
If we want Canada's socialist, free-rider policy to continue, by all means let's prohibit ourselves from arbitraging it. However, if we want them to actually experience the ill effects, let's pour it on the demand side. We'll see how long their price controls last when no pharm company is willing to sell any drugs to them anymore. Like you say, drug companies find it worthwhile to sell to Canada because it's additional marginal profit given the fact of the U.S. market. However, if Canada becomes, in effect, an extortionist, undercutting middleman ("you must sell to us for X, and also, we're gonna undersell to your prior market"), seems to me that pharm companies would stop finding the little arrangement so worthwhile.
Wouldn't they?
You assume that option “2” would lower prices here because it would raise prices in Canada, but don’t think that would happen. Probably there would be pressure to push generics, maybe an international push to limit generic protection to a shorter time frame.
I think that what would happen would be Canada would work with the drug companies to put their own restrictions on sales back to our country.
Meanwhile, there’s still the problem of FDA control over the drugs if they come from another country.
Not really, at least not immediately. Actually the immediate scenario I'd foresee is that we'd indeed probably get cheaper drugs for a while, then the drug companies would start to get ticked as the revenue loss began to be felt, and over time put pressure on Canada, and Canada would either change their policies or drug companies would limit sales to them or both.
In the long run, we'd probably end up with slightly lower prices because we'd no longer be subsidizing Canada's price controls - we'd no longer be paying the "Canada price control premium", whatever amount that may be. I don't know how large that effect is, it may be tiny, but others in this thread brought it up, so..
I think that what would happen would be Canada would work with the drug companies to put their own restrictions on sales back to our country.
Well, and I'd push the other way. But that's a different debate, isn't it? And why would Canada win that debate necessarily? Do you think the Canadian market pulls more weight with pharm companies than the U.S. market? Do you think the pharm companies would choose Canada's solution (we both have price controls) over ours (U.S. doesn't have price controls, and Canada either removes theirs or is left in the cold)? I don't find the outcome "Canada pushes drug companies to push the U.S. to implement price controls, and they do, and so we do" remotely plausible. That relies on a completely non-slippery slope of events taking place, all of which are far-fetched, and each of which could be stopped if/when the time came.
Meanwhile, there’s still the problem of FDA control over the drugs if they come from another country.
This is a result of our bad policy, and I suppose we should feel the costs of it :) Having an "FDA" tell patients which drugs they may ingest is no more free market than what Canada is doing....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.