Posted on 12/05/2019 4:03:17 AM PST by Kaslin
The idea of price controls is an easy sell to people who don’t know any better. But history has repeatedly shown they not only don’t work, they’re a disaster. That they are a disaster might be why the idea is gaining so much traction among Democrats both running for president and currently running Congress – namely Nancy Pelosi – progressives have always left a trail of disaster in their wake. But in one industry in particular, a disaster will be exceptionally hard to recover from: health care.
The story in health care that is getting all the attention is “Medicare for All,” which is socialized medicine by a different, higher polling name. For a complete government takeover of the entire system to happen, the entire private sector system that currently is in place would have to go away. No company is going to continue to employ people for an industry that no longer exists.
But what if the new system fails? With the old system, the one that served so many so well for so long, gone, where can we go to escape the inevitable wait times and rationing that always follow socialized medicine? Nowhere.
And what company would reinvest the billions of dollars needed to reconstitute some semblance of what we currently have knowing that should another left-wing politician decide there are votes to be gained from ruining it again? No company.
Once our private system, as it currently exists is gone, it’s gone.
But it’s not just the insurance aspect of health care that finds itself in the scope of the left, one just as important is in their crosshairs too.
The prescription drug industry is easy to demonize because it’s faceless and has a lot of money. When politicians are willing to cherry pick rare data and pretend it’s common, you can manipulate people to turn against the idea of almost anything. And right now Democrats, led by Pelosi, are doing just that to pharmaceuticals.
Pharmaceuticals are incredibly important. Prescription drugs not only save lives, they improve the quality of lives of the people who need them. But they aren’t free.
It costs more than a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market, and takes about a decade. That’s not counting the time and money spent on drugs that fail in trials after years of investment. The money for that research and development has to come from somewhere, and the window those companies have to make a profit before generic competitors can legally manufacture the same product without the overhead is very narrow.
Now Democrats want to introduce price controls on prescription drugs in an attempt to garner some populist support for 2020. This would be a disaster.
If the US goes the way of the rest of the world, expect the results of the rest of the world, only worse.
Countries where government controls the health care wait months, sometimes years, for new drugs to be introduced into the market. That’s because their governments demand artificially low prices or threaten to steal the patent for the drug and manufacture it themselves. Pharmaceutical companies are given a choice between getting some money or no money, so they opt for some.
This dance also delays the government’s requirement to pay for the drug, saving them money in the short-term. Patients suffer, but they aren’t the focus of any of this. It’s about money.
As Democrats in our government position themselves for an attempted complete takeover, they have to shave costs anywhere they can, and prescription drugs are an easy place to start. But there’s a very basic problem.
As with any industry, if you remove the possibility of profit, you kill advancement. If government sets the price of drugs, the only new drugs that will be developed will be for treating afflictions a lot of people suffer from. If a disease impacts 50,000 people, there will be no research into a treatment for it because the cost will never be able to be recouped. So if Democrats have their way, you’d better hope you or the people you care about come down with something for which there is already a treatment, or a lot of people get it. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.
That’s the problem with government involvement in general and price controls in particular – they bastardize the market and kill innovation. And ultimately, they kill people.
You’ll never know what could have been if you prevent the idea from being explored in the first place. That’s what price controls on drugs will cause.
It might poll well, it might motivate some people to vote, but government setting the prices of prescription drugs would be every bit the disaster socialized medicine would be. Democrats don’t care, Republicans are either on board or afraid to say anything, and we the people will end up losing. But just think of the savings!
ATTORNEYS LAWSUITS need to be REINED IN!!
Fortunately I don't have to pay for my own prescriptions being a veteran with VA benefits but I have family and friends who are and like many others they have to make decisions on whether to eat or buy extremely over priced prescription drugs needed for their health needs so yeah, price controls might not sound like a bad idea, as a matter of fact it sounds pretty good to them. And understandably so. The pharmaceutical industry doesn't seem to hear those that are impacted by their way over priced products. I'd have to side with my family and friends on this matter unless someone else has a better workable idea.
No offense, but the ignorance here is a major part of the problem. "Over priced" is a value judgment that usually has no connection to reality. This is a common problem in an advanced society where even smart people don't know enough about areas outside their expertise to make intelligent statements about them.
In this case, our government and media are filled with people who couldn't develop a useful prescription drug if you gave them 50 years and an unlimited budget to do it. And yet that doesn't stop any of them from sitting there and telling us all how much a useful prescription drug that someone else develops should cost.
Spend billions developing new drugs and getting them approved
Then sell them to socialist medical systems around the world at highly discounted prices, and then
Charge all the development costs to the American consumer.
Not only the "government and media" sees a problem here.
You appear to be another one of those that don’t seem to be impacted by the constantly, near daily rising prices of prescription drug prices like so many millions of Americans are. The drug prices charged for Americans and those for those outside of the country for the very same exact drug, say in Canada or Mexico are so drastically lower that it completly undermines your feeble argument here. Give it a rest please.
That’s why a measure to allow the import of prescription drugs into the U.S. might be so effective. This will do a far better job of leveling prices across national borders than any price controls here would do — because pharmaceutical firms would have to make up the lost revenues by charging similar prices in every market.
So the end result is that these clients get inexpensive professional help, and they get third-rate professionals to work for them. The end result is that they get what they pay for -- and it shows.
A measure to allow imports of these drugs will do far more to fix this problem than any price controls will.
Actually, that's demonstrably not true.
There is no value judgement on certain medications that have been available for YEARS going up in price 75 fold.
Take gout medication. It used to cost .10 a pill. Now it is $7.50 a pill. What changed? A company bought the patent and lobbied the FDA to reclassify the drug. Now one company cornered the market it on it. Yes, they had to do some testing and yes, it cost them money. Their cost to manufacture did not change. This is the very definition of overpriced.
Epi-pens and Insulin are similar. Yes, there is a newish version of Insulin but that has been around nearly 20 years at this point.
Price controls are a bad idea. Allowing companies to corner the market on life saving drugs and set their own prices wildly out of proportion to their cost is also a bad idea.
It's probably because the patent protection on the $7.50 drug will expire before a competing treatment gets approved.
There are clearly all kinds of problems with the way this whole industry works.
If it's a "life saving drug," then it seems to me that it SHOULD be worth a lot. Am I missing something?
Rein in big Pharma is half the battle. The rest of the medical industry is just as much to blame.
Had to go to the drug store for a pretty common drug to protect against infection after a procedure, something not covered by insurance and the price for 10 pills was a staggering $350. Not poor, but the cost - benefit risk ratio could not justify the purchase.
If I had gotten an infection, the costs would have been steep, in the thousands of dollars at least and possibly tens of thousands dollars in worst case, but the costs would have been covered by insurance ( actually by the rest of Americans)
In Canada, that same prescription would have cost about $25.
The reason is cost shifting of the true cost of drug production to the American people.
We Americans subsidize the low drug prices for the rest of the world
First World countries like Canada, and Europe mandate low drug prices by law to support their socialist economies and force drug companies to sell their products at artificially low prices so the drug companies jack up the retail prices of the same drugs here to recover the true manufacturing costs
We here in America pick up the tab for low price drugs for the rest of the with astronomical prices.
The drug companies also sell their drugs in poor third world countries for much reduced prices for the simple reason that very few could afford the drugs - the price I was quoted for that common drug would have , for a one year supply of the product, would have exceeded the yearly average income in 75% of the rest of world
This cost shifting to the US and especially the uninsured, is obscene and it is solely due to government policy and intense lobbying by drug companies.
The real solution is the law put forth by Steve Scaliese that mandates that drug companies charge American consumers the same prices they charge in Canada and the EU
Let’s price EpiPens, which save many lives each year:
A life-saving medication that costs more than $600 in the United States is only a few cents in Mexico.
Why do American taxpayers have to subsidize the whole world?
Big Phama uses “research and development” as the excuse when taxpayers pay 65% of that cost. On top of that, you can’t afford the pen to save your own life, but Big Pharma makes enough money to make multi-billions and enough to buy our politicians.
We subsidize Big Pharma meds at the beginning and the end.
You are so right. GoodRx analysis of cash prices for asthma inhalers shows that prices have climbed about 35% since 2013, from an average price of around $280 in 2013 to more than $380 today.
The average cash price for one inhaler of Advair, a leading medication for asthma, increased from $316 in 2013 to $496 in 2018 – a 56% increase. The average cash price for Flovent, another widely prescribed brand, increased 41% between 2013 and 2018, from $207 to $292.
And those are prices from 2018.
Insulin used to be very affordable
Now it is “ value priced” in market place, which is a polite term for “how much are you willing to pay to stay alive”
My understanding is that in many cases, the taxpayer-supported NIH does a lot of the research that makes those drugs possible in the first place, and that basically pharmaceutical companies are marketing companies.
This may be a good idea, it may be a bad idea. But if Republicans don’t come up with a way to control costs soon, the Democrats will do it for them. It’s really that simple.
Headline nails it.
Some bad ideas are inevitable. Drug price controls, student loan forgiveness, and a Tobin Tax are among them.
Most of Canada’s drugs come from Cancer agent drugs from China. Generics, some are ok depending on the country the come from, but most come from China.
Finland is now Bankrupt, Great Britain going there, any Socialized medical country does NOT fair well.
Meet Shannon MacLeod of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, he’s a friend not just some news article, he just turned 50 and may not see 51. His Medical condition is the result of BAD surgeon. It is the MOST PAINFUL medical condition next to Bone Cancer. He will tell you patients DIE in the ER waiting room, with NO pain meds. The crap Socialist who runs Canada SHUT his Financial assistance...welfare off. He can’t work, can barely walk, has little control of his body functions, he is in late Stage 3, most don’t live past Stage 2 before they commit Suicide. But he is one Stubborn Scot who has 1 reason for living like an animal, a 16 yr old daughter.
Glace Bay man with incurable condition can’t find a doctor
https://www.capebretonpost.com/news/local/glace-bay-man-with-incurable-condition-cant-find-a-doctor-174052/
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