Edit: after a look at uspto, I have that info all botched up. Screw it. Back to lurking!
Name a market that price controls and regulation made better.
It’s not that government intervention is fundamentally wrong, it’s just we haven’t been allowed to do enough of it yet.
Says who? A company created a cure or treatment for a condition that has never existed before. Who gets a vote on the price other than the market? Why?
You mean other than the market for pharmaceuticals? Securities. Regulation improved that market worlds over. Also - railroad transportation, through common carrier regulation.
Translation: I can’t debate policy, so I just resort over and over to my threadbare trope of “government sucks and stuff.”
Okay.
Says the people who granted a privileged monopoly in a market where it wouldn’t otherwise exist, and who need to receive more in exchange for the bestowed privilege.
Because in a society that strives to be moral, we object to the idea that the only proper way to handle pricing of important health care is exercising consumer choice.
As a result, we get a vote on prices as a matter of public interest and policy in addition to consumers privately acting on their own.
That’s the world we live in, and thankfully so, even as the government intervention has a mixed track record. This lunatic fantasy of disease stricken patients haggling over the price of a life saving drug with a pharmaceutical company in the name of mindless adherence to a bastardized and morally corrupt view of liberty was put to death decades ago.
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What fucking morals are you talking about?
Person A is sick with a disease with no treatment options.
Company B develops a cure/treatment for said disease and price it at a price point that’s higher than Person A is willing or able to pay.
How is person A worse off than he/she was before?
Person A has lost the chance of another company coming along and providing it at a low enough price due to govt imposed monopolies.
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Do we believe in intellectual property rights in here or no? Is IP in healthcare special? What am I missing?
I’m trying to figure out how companies that spend tens of billions on r&d will be able to profit from the roughly 14% of drugs that gain fda approval if generics are allowed almost immediately?
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Do you feel confident that the government will do the right thing?
Essentially, the government would now be setting prices for drugs. At the very least they would be setting the price ceiling. The fed already sets a number of price floors and ceiling. What’s next? Doctor’s can only charge the same amount for heart surgery as the countries listed? Separate topic, but we’ve talked at length about the fed wanting to cap CEO pay before. We also know Sanders wants to control other healthcare costs (40% reduction in payouts to healthcare workers in his m4a).
I tell you what, I’ll admit it’s a savy move for the 2nd most worthless Senator in the Senate. It gets him closer to the drug price cut needed for Medicare for all to make budgetary sense.
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A patent is not a monopoly. I’m not sure why two intelligent guys feel the need to misuse this concept.
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In this specific industry/example, it’s a distinction without a practical difference, no?
Besides, imo this change isn’t new regs. It’s less regs
Of course Bernie doesn’t believe in IP, or private property in general.
Don’t you know profits are wrong and immoral? Pharma companies should just develop these drugs and sell them at whatever price the Senate deems fair. I’m sure we’ll have all the innovation that the USSR and Red China have with a similar incentive system
I don’t think so. How many different non-generic heart medications are there, for example?
You don’t think r&d will drop in the US if patent protection is removed and/or price controls are created?
A monopoly is controlling an entire market. This regulation is tantamount to telling Ford they either lower their price for the Mustang, or they’ll give the Mustang trademarks/IP away to GM. Makes sense.
I’m surprised he hasn’t suggested all r&d go through NIH with a 10,000% increase in their budget. We’ll just add a “small” r&d tax.
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Good question. It would be interesting to know roughly what % of current drugs have an equivalent.
Sure it’ll probably drop a bit.
No it isn’t
This regulation is tantamount to telling Ford “we’ll regulate and anti free market the fuck out of all of your competition as long as you don’t abuse the govt provided power you’re being granted.”
Well, sure. What’s the right thing here? Pharm Company A overcharged for a cancer drug under patent and so that triggers the onset of competition in a marketplace? Is that somehow a concerning result of abuse of power on the part of government?
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A patent is 100% a monopoly.
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Ironically, the right would be cheering this as a move away from govt control towards a more free market if good ole Bernie hadn’t slapped his socialist name on it.
But still. Feels weird for small govt types to be in favor of the side of this coin with more govt control and a less free market
The Big Dumb Coloring Book of Libertarianism doesn’t teach nuance - it teaches basics, like Good Guys and Villains.
Patent abuse are subject to antitrust action (but how can that be, if it’s not a monopoly?), and no one bats an eye at “government action” there. Add a layer of “punishment” being competition in a market and, well, that requires a fainting couch.
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Who is the government to say company A is overcharging in the first place and why are we looking to other countries with far more socialized (read controlled) healthcare for the median (median or average can’t remember)? Why not use a break even calculation based on historic/actual costs incurred?
And what happens when the government decides cancer drugs are a right that should cost nothing?
The government is coercing an outcome through blackmail. That’s hardly triggering “competition in the marketplace”.
That’s patently absurd.
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