On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:57:37 -0400, William Brown
wrote:
|
|
| Dave Hinz wrote:
| On 13 Oct 2004 21:29:23 -0700, Dan Cullimore wrote:
|
|
| "...Those cheap foreign drugs" are actually manufactured by U.S.
| companies (often IN the U.S.), then sold to Canadian firms at far less
| than the artificially high U.S. market price.
|
|
| Why are they selling to Canadian firms for less money? That's the
| real thing to fix, not how to re-import it.
|
|
| The research involved in discovering new drugs and getting them
| improved, and in setting up the production facilities, is very
| expensive; actual production costs are relatively low. The drug
| companies set their prices here high enough to recover all their costs
| within the relatively short peroid of time that the drug is protected
| against generics.
I can see why one might think this, as the pharmaceutical giants have
been pushing this story down our throats for over a half century, but
it is not really the whole story. Much more money (2.5 times in fact)
goes for marketing the drugs than for "research." And a large
percentage of the drugs are just clones of drugs that have already
been discovered, developed, and marketed. In addition, many of the
drugs were developed not in the labs of the drug companies but in
universities funded by the government. These drugs are then marketed
and sold at a huge profit by drug companies, in a patent environment
that assures them of a monopoly marketplace. The universities get a
tiny portion of the profits for their trouble.
See this article, for example:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/09/09_401.html
PS: having worked for six years in a business whose clients came from
the pharmaceutical industry, I can attest that this industry willingly
accepts the highest prices available for all goods and services that
they require, including their marketing. Guess who pays for this?
|
| Canada simply said to our drug companies that they won't buy the drugs
| unless they get a much lower price; as long as the drug company can
| recover their relatively low production costs and a profit from these
| additional sales, it makes perfect sense for them to sell for less to
| the Canadian government.
|
| The result is that we consumers are covering the research and
| development costs, while Canada is getting a free ride.
This is more or less correct, although the "free ride" part is
argueable. Foreign sales are like icing on the cake to American
pharmaceutical companies (and in other industries as well). Keep in
mind that the major market for almost all these drugs is in in the
USA.
|
| It seems to me the best solution would be to tax drug exports so the
| Canadians, and other countries who play the same game, would end up
| paying the same prices we are paying; the US government could use the
| tax money to help cover some of the medical research it already is
| supporting.
|
| I think a lot of the people whining about the costs of drugs and medical
| care would not even be alive without the great advances in drugs and
| treatment that these high costs have allowed. Diseases that once killed
| us are now successfully managed; surgeons now repair joints that would
| have just been left to atrophy a few years ago. We are living longer
| and better because we have been willing to pay the costs of this
| development.
|
| Incidentally, I have read that Canada's health care system that the
| Democrats want to copy routinely runs out of money and denies people
| treatment (they cross the border for treatment here, just as some of us
| cross the border for drugs there), and that it is currently being
| reevaluated as they cannot afford to continue it.
I doubt that any US national health care system would be much like the
one in Canada. Why should it? For one thing, the US would have to pay
doctors a good deal more than in Canada. The biggest problem I have
heard from my two Canadian buddies is that they have to wait,
sometimes for months, for certain elective or non-emergency surgeries.
It seems to depend a lot on where you live.
If that's their biggest issue, it sounds pretty attractive to me. I
pay for ALL my own health insurance. It costs well over $12,000 a year
for my wife and me. Next year, the cost will increase 18%. It's my
single biggest expense, even more than taxes, even more than my house,
even more than my two cars.
And I still can't get a flu shot despite qualifying because of three
chronic illnesses.
|
| No, I'm not involved in the health care system, other than as a
| consumer, but I have lived to be older than my father when he died, as
| he lived to be older than his father when he died.
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