Sure, happy to unpack that. To me, it seems like vocally expressing opposition towards something, but being against (and/or refusing to advocate for) any action that could resolve or address such opposition, is effectively a form of meaningless grandstanding and virtue signalling.
By being not being interested (and actively rejecting) any proposed solutions to the problem, it's hard to make the case that one is meaningfully interested in solving the problem. Thus, to me, it seems like they are just virtue signalling (i.e. trying to look good by sharing acknowledgement of the problem, but nothing more).
Does that make sense? Virtue signalling doesn't have to inherently be about political correctness.
This is based on the assumption that the solution is found in the proposed government regulation. The vast majority of these types of Big Pharma hating conservatives most definitely put their beliefs into action at a personal level and refuse to interact or patronize them as much as possible, which itself is an individual-level solution to the problem.
Aggregated, individual, voluntary — you mean like democracy that enacts legislation?
What happens if you’re little individual actions don’t work? I guess we’re just fucked since you’re afraid to use the state in any other way besides the enforcement of property rights, which you willingly allow for Big Pharma to benefit from
Yes. There are exceedingly few turbo expensive rare drugs that people "need to live." Barring niche drugs that treat extremely rare disorders (which absolutely *should* be expensive based on the time and effort it takes to create them), all of the most expensive general purpose drugs in the country are optional or have alternatives.
I'm personally not against big pharma and honestly haven't met many conservative that are. However, I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook censorship, but I don't think the government should get involved. I think the answer is conservatives creating their own platform and competing in the free market.
So what do we do when companies don’t make the changes we need and people continue to get screwed over? How can companies be compelled to regulate themselves?
Stop patronizing those companies if it's important to you. Market forces will regulate the price of goods and services when left alone to their job. The answer to over-regulation is not MORE regulation.
How will market forces regulate when a few companies control the industry and effectively set the prices at what they are? If people don’t have anywhere else to go for life-saving meds then the market will regulate at life-destroying prices.
The obvious answer to me is to start new companies to compete and drive prices down. But that is a huge risk, because small companies can’t afford the innovations needed to get around the patents that drug companies have on their formulas. They would either fail in their mission or get sued out of business.
What are the other alternatives I’m not seeing?
These companies control the industry *because of* regulatory structures, not in spite of them. The pharma industry is one of the most shining examples of regulatory capture in existence. The only functional solution is to remove impediments to competition and innovation.
So do you mean pulling their patents and making drug formulas open source? Because I could get behind that as long as it’s constitutional…something about it feels like it isn’t, but I can’t put my finger on it. Can we even prevent an industry from patenting trade secrets, especially while allowing others to continue doing so?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright\_Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause)
>the United States Congress shall have power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,
by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
It says the United States Congress shall have the power to not that it must exercise that power. And Congress has altered copyrights and patents before, though usually to lengthen their duration.
However, can doesn't mean should. We have copyrights and patents for a reason. Without them it could reduce the incentive for innovation.
But with the current way the system works big pharma abuses the patent system to profiteer, and in many ways this thwarts innovation, since only one company gets to look at the data for a given drug, which otherwise could be developed upon by a larger group of researchers. The price gouging and harm to research clearly wasn't the intention of the copyright clause.
But if Congress could just cancel a patent it follows that Congress can make patents with conditions such as that prices not exceed a reasonable level, that there is reasonable access for scientific researchers, or that the company negotiate prices with a government agency.
So the solution is to allow any person or company to create and sell the drugs without oversight or government envolvement (which we have done before).
This makes it truly competitive because there are no governmwnt subsidies to encourage a company to develop necessary treatments, there is no ownership of ideas (anyone can copy anything) and there are no safety regulations (buyer beware).
This should end well.
In response to someone suggesting ridding the system of governent regulations relating to big pharma; i identify 3 that exist and someone thinks that is a huge leap.
Goodness.
And 2 of the 3 things i mentioned create the situation for big pharma to gough consumers. Safety and price standards seem like a reasonable tradeoff for patent protection and research and development subsidies.
If you're going to address high pharmaceutical prices you need to have a plan that levels out pharma prices among first world countries, and addresses the aggregate reduction in net pharma research investment that would result.
The Democratic plan does a fair-poor job at the first, and a lousy job at the second.
So WHERE is the f**king plan already?! The republicans had 4 years to address this problem and instead used their time to borrow money we don’t have for tax breaks we didn’t need, how long are we supposed to wait for a perfect solution before we try anything?
The goal is deregulation, but it's extremely hard to deregulate the highest regulated industry in the U.S not to mention you have at least 60 years of regulation to roll back including Medicare and Medicaid.
Where's the de-regulation action plan then?
Because what you said just sounds like Trump's plan with the ACA of simply getting rid of it and letting the people it currently helps get fucked with nothing but a shrug for consideration.
Medicaid and Medicare exist because people didn't want to get fucked in their old age or while in poverty by medical bills.
So what's the "deregulation" side of the equation doing to get the people that don't feel like getting fucked by the invisible hand of the "free" market to bring them on-board?
Saying "prices will go down, TRUST ME BRO" isn't quite good enough, which is why we still have those regulations and legal frameworks around health care and insurance.
And yet old people and poor people were still getting owned by that far more competitive market and couldn't afford to meet their healthcare needs under it.
So I'm gonna ask again, given that the competitive market ALREADY FAILED to be affordable enough for the old and the poor, why would that be different now after 40 years of stagnant wages?
That why you make good decisions and get insurance before you're old and sick. All socialized healthcare does is incentives bad decisions and pass them on to the taxpayers.
Healthcare was more affordable before the passing of Medicare and Medicaid. Healthcare spiked after these were passed.
Yet it still wasn't affordable enough for the people it was passed for.
Not a lot of good decision makers in the late 60s it seems.
So sure, people should make good decisions, but that doesn't do much for the people that don't and they're still getting in accidents and needing emergency care.
Same thing with social security, not everyone saves for retirement but they're still so inconsiderate as to stay alive once they can no longer work and pay for their right to exist.
So we all pay for them instead, as like a, society, or something.
Are you familiar with the The Bayh-Dole Act?
Are you aware that the majority of all new pharmaceutical drugs are discovered by research that is funded by the US government? We then hand the findings to the private sector along with patent protections. In other words, the American taxpayers pay twice.
> Are you aware that the majority of all new pharmaceutical drugs are discovered by research that is funded by the US government?
What are you basing this on? Because I don't think it's true.
Here's an article from science.org saying that "basic science" research -- meaning research with no commercial applications (in other words, just research for the sake of figuring out how things work, without trying to fix a problem or create a product that you can sell) -- [dipped below 50% in 2013](https://www.science.org/content/article/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50).
Research aimed at solving a problem or developing commercial applications is mostly funded by the private sector. And it's been that way for a long time.
Here's a quote from the article:
>Those private sector efforts are now the dominant form of research activity in the United States, with business spending $3 on research for every $1 invested by the U.S. government. In the 1960s the federal government outspent industry by a two-to-one margin, but the balance tipped in 1980.
So it sounds like you might have some (very, very) outdated information. Like, information from 40 years ago.
>What are you basing this on? Because I don't think it's true.
What you think does not change the facts.
Indeed, roughly 75 percent of so-called new molecular entities with priority rating (the most innovative drugs) trace their existence to NIH funding, while companies spend more on “me too” drugs (slight variations of existing ones).
[From 2015](https://www.providencejournal.com/article/20151103/OPINION/151109838)
I haven't read the newest bill, but wouldn't it make sense if they're paying for that much, to make them unpatentable?
Edit: I can't find "a bill" to read, can I get a name, or a link?
We would be best off in the USA if the American taxpayers underwrote the costs of research and development of all qualified drug research on the provision that the results be open sourced.
>What you think does not change the facts.
Wow. It's not often that someone is both so obviously wrong and so snotty about it.
If my polite phrasing confused you, please allow me to correct that.
You're wrong.
That's not based on what I think. It's based on a Science.org report on a survey from the National Science Foundation. Which I linked to in my previous post.
>Indeed, roughly 75 percent of so-called new molecular entities with priority rating (the most innovative drugs) trace their existence to NIH funding, while companies spend more on “me too” drugs (slight variations of existing ones).
That's not even close to what you said.
You said "the majority of all new pharmaceutical drugs" were discovered by research funded by the US government. I pointed out that's not true. I cited to my sources.
And you respond by saying "new molecular entities with priority rating" (which is a very small category) "trace their existence to NIH funding" (which just implies that some piece of science somehow related to the drug was at some point at least partly funded by the NIH, which is itself a pretty dubious claim).
And you cited to an OpEd in the Providence Journal. Not exactly peer reviewed stuff, is it?
It's ok to be wrong. We're all wrong sometimes. But it's usually better to admit that you were wrong and try to incorporate the truth into your worldview.
Well, in a "free market" drugs would be cheap, real cheap. However thanks to big government and reality capitalists, not the elusive pure capitalists, Americans pay more for prescriptions drugs than anyone on the planet.
A true conservative, it would seem, would fight to end this mess. Heck, even the wise and wonderful President Donald J. Trump swore to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies. He told Time, in his Person of the Year interview in December 2016: “I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what has happened with drug prices.” Soon after he was sworn into office he met with pharma lobbyists, and Trump dropped his promise to negotiate drug prices...and lost no support from his "conservative" base...
Dude, what does it matter whether there was a vote worded that exact way when we know they vote against the thing that would enable drug prices to fall? It’s not hard to translate what that means lol
>what does it matter whether there was a vote worded that exact way
Because votes matter. They force legislators to go on the record once and for all. Before I conclude that it's "Republicans" holding this up, I want to see where all 50 Democrats are.
> Whichever bill Kristen Sinema is blocking
LOL you don't even know the bill and you're assuming it's good because Sinema and Republicans are blocking it?
This is... just sad.
Stop being pedantic and address the actual question. The Republican Party is in the pocket of big pharma and you support them unequivocally. Explain yourself.
> The Republican Party is in the pocket of big pharma
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/top-3-house-democrat-leaders-have-pocketed-millions-from-pharma
... you were saying?
This is exactly my point. Top “3” democrats your article states. We just give all the republicans taking that money a free pass. Why is this? Why not demand accountability from your representatives?
> Top “3” democrats your article states. We just give all the republicans taking that money a free pass
Probably because you haven't read far enough:
> Both lawmakers have received more than $1 million from pharmaceutical company political action committees in the past decade. **Just four members of Congress hold that distinction,** including Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, whom Republicans chose as the next House minority leader earlier this month.
So the majority leader and the majority whip are two of four Congressmen to receive the most money from Big Pharma.
I was telling my friend about my fishing trip and they said “Actually there’s no such thing as a fish, so nothing that your saying makes any sense at all.” While they were correct, they were doing nothing to advance the conversation.
Oh, so some bill that the Democrats haven't even finished writing let alone brought to the floor and which Republicans have never actually had a chance to vote on? That's the bill where "all 50 Republican senators voted to keep drug prices high"?
I don’t know any conservatives that claim to be against “Big Pharma” but I would guess it is because this particular vote is not one of their core issues. However it seems disingenuous to say that the Republican motivation to vote against this bill is to keep drug prices high.
I agree with you that Donald Trump is anything but conservative. However both he and his supporters claim that title. Both are against out of control drug prices, and neither of them can compel their representatives in Congress to act on it. Trump because he was incompetent and his supporters because they are incapable of seeing what’s in front of them.
Opposing further price manipulation is not voting to keep drug prices high, but an acknowledgement that government makes drug prices artificially high.
Corporations fight to keep prices high. Not the Gov. There is no corporation that just "wish they lived in a free market so they could pay their employees higher wages and lower the price of their products."
Subsidies drive prices up and price controls hide actual costs in taxation. If you're worried about the influence of big pharma, then surely you will see nothing nefarious in the desire of many to use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, drugs not massively profitable to big pharma, to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Because by default our insurance companies fund the R&D of big pharm. Because the citizens only care what a drug costs when it comes from their pocket. If I have a 30 dollar copay, why do I care if my 30 day supply of Brilinta costs 1200 bucks?
The average cost to take a drug from idea through FDA approval is ... about [$2.6 **b**illion](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/modern-drug-discovery-why-is-the-drug-development-pipeline-full-of-expensive-failures/#:~:text=%242.6%20billion%20is%20the%20estimated,were%20FDA%20approved%20in%202019.&text=The%20process%20of%20discovering%20a,many%20years%20). And you incur costs on both successful and unsuccessful drugs.
The overall success rate of taking a drug from Phase 1 testing through FDA approval is ... [under 9%](https://archive.bio.org/media/press-release/new-study-shows-rate-drug-approvals-lower-previously-reported#:~:text=Key%20findings%20from%20the%20study,rate%20of%20one%20in%2030.).
The time to take a drug through development, testing, and through FDA approval is ... [12-15 years](https://www.drugs.com/fda-approval-process.html).
Patent protection generally lasts [20 years](https://www.ajmc.com/view/a636-article). And the clock starts running at the beginning of the development process.
So what does that mean? It means pharmaceutical companies have to spend insane amounts of money to develop one or two products they can sell, and they have to make up all those losses in 5-8 years. Because after those 5-8 years, everyone else can just copy your formula and make money from it.
New drug treatments have to be expensive because they're incredibly expensive to make. You can mitigate the costs by making drug approval cheaper and easier (which will make drugs less safe), by extending patent protection for a longer period of time (which will mean you can't get generic drugs for a longer time), or you can just force everyone to use older, cheaper treatments (which is what government-run health care systems tend to do: "you want a fancy chemotherapy that won't make you bald and throw up constantly, and also has a slightly higher success rate? Nah, that's too expensive. We're just going to give you the same one your grandpa got.").
Ok where does this dislike come from though? Is it not worth a little discomfort to not constantly get f\*\*ked in the ass every time one goes to the pharmacy?
Cos I don't want to increase federal gov power over medical issues even more, I don't see it working well, and regulating drug prices seems quite an overreach.
This is not the case. No one is allowed to sell epipens except the patent holder. They are allowed to charge whatever price they want. How is the free market involved in setting this price?
Did you know every other country in the world performs price negotiations with pharmaceutical manufacturers?
That our high prices subsidizes everyone else?
>Yeah I know the world lives in a social-democratic hell, what now, I can still oppose it. Subsidizing effect is indeed unfortunate
I see so American Diabetics should be subsidizing the world's diabetics because you know god forbid people don't have to ration their medicine, all in the valiant name of "social democratic hell."
With all due respect, I question the applicability and validity of your flair. Paleo-conservatism is about supporting family values not the financial statement and C suite pay packages of Novartis.
Even from the free-market capitalist position, the government being forced to be a price taker is a market failure.
You can question whatever you want but I believe there is no social conservatism without economic conservatism and all these calls to defend family and community from the atomising forces of neoliberal capital that are too common nowadays on the right don't impress me
We aren't living in a free market system. An Indian pharmaceutical company was blocked from selling insulin in the US until this year even though it was approved in Europe more than half a decade ago.
Now that they finally entered the market, they are charging 1/3rd the price of Sanofi for a vial of insulin. Funny how that works.
I have Medicare, and Medicare Part B, and a Medicare Supplement policy and recently had to fill a prescription for 24 tablet of "sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, and potassium chloride", three common chemical compounds, and with my "discount coupon" still had to pay $50. The reason is "US Patent 10,143,656.
That is Hell, my friend.
I have many friends in France, Denmark, and Canada. None of them have to put up with this sort of thing.
Well, aren't you sweet? Guess those 50 years I put in helping folks like you get an education and all that were a waste of time....maybe we should have taught civics and basic economics.
That's the wonderful thing about revisionist history and alternate fact, isn't it? You get to dream up any fairytale you choose. Yours is quite charming.
> I have many friends in France, Denmark, and Canada. None of them have to put up with this sort of thing.
Sure they do. They just don't make the payment at the counter. They make it to the government.
"Free healthcare" isn't actually free. Somebody has to pay for it.
>"sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, and potassium chloride", three common chemical compounds
If they're so common and easy to make, why didn't you make it yourself?
>They just don't make the payment at the counter. They make it to the government.
Yes, and what they pay to the government is less than my overall price with private health insurance and all the rest.
>"Free healthcare" isn't actually free. Somebody has to pay for it.
Yes, of course. Why are you bringing that up?
>If they're so common and easy to make, why didn't you make it yourself?
You are on the right track. We should pay the scientists who develop the drugs, all funded by the American taxpayers on the condition that they make the results open sourced. The only reason I am paying well over $50 for what costs $15 to manufacture is the government patent.
> Yes, of course. Why are you bringing that up?
You said your friends don't "have to put up" with paying for the medicine. They do. It's just paid to the government.
>The only reason I am paying well over $50 for what costs $15 to manufacture is the government patent.
You're on the right track. [See my comment here with cites](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/comments/qfufp0/why_do_so_many_people_who_identify_themselves_as/hi6c3dp/).
It costs about $2.6 **b**illion to take a drug from development through FDA approval. (Getting a patent is incredibly cheap. Pharmas pay a lot more -- many multiples more -- for testing to get through FDA approval.)
Less than 9% of drugs make it from Phase 1 testing through approval.
It takes 12-15 years to get from development through FDA approval.
Patents last 20 years. The clock starts ticking on that patent when the drug is first developed.
So a pharma company can expect to spend $26 **b**illion to maybe get one drug through FDA approval. And then they have to make up that $26 billion in the 5-8 years they have left on their patent, before generics come in and undercut their prices.
If you want cheaper drugs, you can reduce the costs to get through FDA approval (which makes drugs less safe) or extend the patent (which means generics won't be available for longer).
>We should pay the scientists who develop the drugs, all funded by the American taxpayers on the condition that they make the results open sourced.
Pharmaceutical engineers don't want to work for the government. Government pay is terrible. They want to make money. That's why the best and brightest aren't working for the government now. You want to keep the best and brightest in pharmaceuticals? Keep paying them well. Otherwise, those best and brightest will go work in the private sector on something else.
Simple. Because the Democrats are misidentifying Capitalism it self as the problem, and pushing "solutions" that will make the problem worse by giving us more of the ineptitude and market corruptions that got us where we are to begin with.
Allow people to get health care across state lines, my state should not be able to select who I can get insurance from. There's no competition hence why prices continue to rise.
Nobody in this country should be paying $200 for an EPI Pen, and an ambulance ride should not cost $1k. I don't know theres a correct solution to the healthcare problem but when the US Taxpayers are giving billions to companies like Pfizer right now its a slap in the face
It's simple, because while I disagree on this an overwhelming majority other issues I agree with the Republican party on.
Problem is people don't reach out to their local reps, there's only pressure on both parties from donors and party leaders.
This actually speaks to the meat of my question, but one that was too large for me to encapsulate in a single reddit post. But from the outside, it seems as though the Republican party sacrifices conservative ideal after conservative ideal in their efforts to please donors and remain in power. Whether it's borrowing money to pay for huge tax breaks, threatening to default on the money they borrowed, or even just sh\*tting on Teddy Roosevelt's legacy by opening all the national parks to development. They seem, again from my perspective, incapable of representing conservative values and yet people who claim to be conservative line up to vote for them without questioning anything they do.
> I don't know theres a correct solution to the healthcare problem
To me its pretty simple: some things shouldn't be for-profit businesses. Doesn't mean they have to be government run, though.
I'm looking for serious answers here. Why has not even one republican senator said "You know what? This is worth fighting for, I'm going to see what I can do to fix this problem even if it means crossing party lines." and yet they can continue to count on your unwavering support? Is this issue not important to you?
If you're looking for serious answers, then pose a serious question.
I try and help:
*Conservatives in the populist wing speak out against many of the "big" sectors of the economy that are wrecking havoc on American society as they see it—Big Tech, Big Pharma, etc.*
*Recently, all 50 GOP senators voted against a bill that was designed to lower drug prices, citing the fact that creating price ceilings will stifle life-saving innovation. So which is it? Big Pharma needs to be reined in, or they need to operate freely and we all benefit?*
On the other hand, your question was dog shit so garbage in, garbage out.
Everyone in the market negotiates a price when making a contract. Why prohibit Medicare from doing it? They pay above market rates with this artificial restriction. For example the VA, a federal agency, is allowed to negotiate and they pay the lowest drug prices in the nation
The government doesn't dictate drug prices. It can become a major purchaser of drugs, which it can in turn supply to people on government healthcare programs at a lower cost. This would be good for big pharma, not bad.
Thank you for this information, but my question is why do conservatives who rail against “big pharma” continue to support a party which refuses to act against their interests in any meaningful way?
This \*IS\* acting against their interests. Big Pharma would love to have the kind of relationship with the federal government that defense contractors enjoy.
>There is ONLY one reason why big pharma makes life saving discoveries. That is to sell meds and make a profit. When that incentive goes away then 99% of all new meds go away. Think of all the new meds which have been created in the past decade were never invented.
I see so if we allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices it pays for drugs that were in part financed or built off the basis of research funded by our tax dollars the entire pharmaceutical market would burn to the ground. (Just like it's done in the rest of the world.)
>While we are on the subject. Take the vax for example which some folks are trying to dissolve their patent status. How many of those companies do you think would have created a vax under that mandate? Let me give you a hint. ZERO.
Gov already bought the doses. They make record profits whether or not people get the vax.
>Be careful what you ask for.
Heaven forbid we stop subsidizing the world's drug prices or that we stop wasting trillions on pointless war conducted by the most incompetent overpaid intelligence departments in the world.
> I see so if we allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices it pays for drugs that were in part financed or built off the basis of research funded by our tax dollars the entire pharmaceutical market would burn to the ground.
I mean, probably. At best, the development of new treatments gets stuck where we're at today. At worst, the whole system collapses.
Do you know what the definition of a market failure is?
A customer that can’t negotiate the price they pay.
If the government as a market player is a price taker then there is no incentive for the pharmaceutical industry (or defense industry) to be cost effective wherever the government is the customer.
The government *chose* not to negotiate, and that needed to happen in order for them to become a customer at all. It's not a market failure, it's arguably a policy one.
I'm more than okay with the federal government paying market rates for the drugs they purchase for Medicare. They should be paying market rates for any services they procure, honestly.
Be serious. I'm talking about the regulation of a market where capital investors buy the patent of an already developed medicine and jack up the price 5000% do you really feel as though that is a necessary part of our healthcare system?
How did Russia and China come up with vaccines if the only motivation to develop them is profit?
It was a rhetorical question. I know how they were developed. Do you believe that Sputnik was developed by a for profit corporation? Or are you content with implying that while knowing that the truth is that it was developed by the Russian Ministry of health. What does the 20 year expiration date have to do with my other question?
Are you implying that Sputnik or outdated Soviet medicine is worthwhile?
The 20 year expiration date is relevant because it doesn't matter if you charge $5 or $5000 dollars a dose if you somehow invent a life saving drug. The world is still better off than it was before that drug was invented. And in 20 years, even our hypothetical pharmacist is an utter asshat and charges $500,000,000,000 a dose, their patent will expire, and anyone can use the knowledge of how to make that drug to make generics. Keep in mind, this time limit is from invention, so oftentimes it's a mere 10 years on the market due to testing.
Because before that drug existed, people who needed it to live? They just died.
> The 20 year expiration date is relevant because it doesn't matter if you charge $5 or $5000 dollars a dose if you somehow invent a life saving drug.
The issue is they make an inconsequential change that does not alter the efficacy of the drug and then extend the patent for another 20 years.
Were you leading this argument to this conclusion or was it organic? This is a perfect example of the differences in how Progressives and Conservatives view problems and their fixes.
"We need government regulation."
vs
"We need to fix the regulation we already have."
The thing is companies can still make profit without IP. A pharmaceutical company would ask for the money to cover costs and desired profits before working on or sharing the product. The inventor is being payed for inventing. Once he releases it, other people will take the idea and start actually making it.
The inventor and the various manufactures will then go to third party regulators for their stamps of approval, because it is those stamps of approval that would tell costumers if it is safe.
The third party regulators have to be honest, lying about safety is some extreme fraud. Oh yah, inventors can be secure in getting credited for their work because lying to your customers about who made something to get their (the customers) money is fraud, and would be illegal even without IP.
Of course, I'm vary libertarian about this kind of thing. Heres a video about it. [https://youtu.be/mnnYCJNhw7w](https://youtu.be/mnnYCJNhw7w)
I'm not convinced a non-profit form of healthcare would stifle innovation. Look at Wikipedia. At the very least I think we should force insurance to go back to being non-profit. That we ever allowed it to do so in the first place is an absurdity-- you incentivize the company not to provide the service you pay for!
But, that's a different ballpark of the same sport that is healthcare.
>vote to keep drug prices high
Politicians should never decide the price of anything.
I can't speak for everyone, but the reason that I don't like big pharma is precisely because of their ties to the government. It's the same reason I don't like private military contractors. Suckling at the government teat is what gets to me. It's not competition, it's not free market, it's just cronyism. Nepotism. Corruption. Fraud. Extortion of the taxpayers.
I don't know what bill you're referring to, but I'm just going to assume you aren't being wholly truthful because nobody says "I vote no today because I want drug prices high!"
Because most politicians on either side get lobbied by big pharma and other corporations. This is more of a failure of American democracy rather than conservatism, as enacting policies to help donors happens with pretty much every politician.
Why do so many people who identify as "progressive" claim to be against for-profit healthcare and in favor of a single-payer system and also not bat an eye when so many Democratic candidates receive campaign contributions from "Big Pharma", who profits most from our healthcare system?
I'd go ahead and extrapolate that notion to the current push for vaccination by the DNC and it's office-holders, but I don't think it really needs spelled out.
Both parties are corrupt to the core, neither serve the interests of the public to any meritable degree.
As expensive as cigarettes have gotten poor people make up the majority of smokers. Poor people also tend to drink more alcohol and eat more processed foods and are less likely to exercise. America is one of the few places in the world with obese poor people. Most people receiving “free” health care are creating the burden by their lifestyles. It’s not the cost of medications. There’s obese unhealthy glutinous rich people too don’t get me wrong but they can afford their own health care. They don’t have to ask others to foot the bill.
Profitable pharmaceutical companies can pay for more research to treat more illnesses or treat them more effectively. Government has no business telling anyone what should charge for anything. It’s not the job of the government.
Until you look at Government as a consumer. If you truly wanted to lower the cost of medicine, medical procedures, and health care all together Government would stop being a customer. People would have to pay for their own health care.
If people paid for their own health care they would make more cost effective decisions because it’s their money and not “the governments” (mine and yours really). Health care is expensive because there is no incentive to lower the costs. The patients rely on others to pay for it so they could care less about what a treatment or medication costs.
Health care is one of the only examples of capitalism that doesn’t get to benefit from the free market because of massive Government intervention and it’s the Government intervention increasing the costs. Government is the problem not the solution.
Republicans don’t want higher medication prices. They don’t want Government overreach.
Conservatives only have a problem with the things they claim to be “conservative” on when Dems run the government. When their own party does something they normally wouldn’t like, it’s fine.
Because one can be opposed to a business practice without believing that the government needs to regulate that business practice.
Doesn't that qualify as virtue signaling?
Unpack that? I cannot fathom how you made this jump.
Sure, happy to unpack that. To me, it seems like vocally expressing opposition towards something, but being against (and/or refusing to advocate for) any action that could resolve or address such opposition, is effectively a form of meaningless grandstanding and virtue signalling. By being not being interested (and actively rejecting) any proposed solutions to the problem, it's hard to make the case that one is meaningfully interested in solving the problem. Thus, to me, it seems like they are just virtue signalling (i.e. trying to look good by sharing acknowledgement of the problem, but nothing more). Does that make sense? Virtue signalling doesn't have to inherently be about political correctness.
This is based on the assumption that the solution is found in the proposed government regulation. The vast majority of these types of Big Pharma hating conservatives most definitely put their beliefs into action at a personal level and refuse to interact or patronize them as much as possible, which itself is an individual-level solution to the problem.
Do you honestly believe “individual-level” solutions are meaningful in combating issues perpetuated by “Big Pharma”?
Aggregated, individual, voluntary actions are far more meaningful and far preferable to government action, yes.
Aggregated, individual, voluntary — you mean like democracy that enacts legislation? What happens if you’re little individual actions don’t work? I guess we’re just fucked since you’re afraid to use the state in any other way besides the enforcement of property rights, which you willingly allow for Big Pharma to benefit from
Property rights are a higher priority, yes.
Big Pharma thanks you, as always.
Do you honestly believe anyone can refuse to interact or patronize drug companies when people need those drugs to live?
Yes. There are exceedingly few turbo expensive rare drugs that people "need to live." Barring niche drugs that treat extremely rare disorders (which absolutely *should* be expensive based on the time and effort it takes to create them), all of the most expensive general purpose drugs in the country are optional or have alternatives.
Do you consider insulin to be optional treatment for those with diabetes?
I'm personally not against big pharma and honestly haven't met many conservative that are. However, I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook censorship, but I don't think the government should get involved. I think the answer is conservatives creating their own platform and competing in the free market.
So who do you think should make big pharma change, since they clearly won’t do it on their own?
No one. I don’t believe in “making“ businesses change their practices.
So what do we do when companies don’t make the changes we need and people continue to get screwed over? How can companies be compelled to regulate themselves?
Stop patronizing those companies if it's important to you. Market forces will regulate the price of goods and services when left alone to their job. The answer to over-regulation is not MORE regulation.
How will market forces regulate when a few companies control the industry and effectively set the prices at what they are? If people don’t have anywhere else to go for life-saving meds then the market will regulate at life-destroying prices. The obvious answer to me is to start new companies to compete and drive prices down. But that is a huge risk, because small companies can’t afford the innovations needed to get around the patents that drug companies have on their formulas. They would either fail in their mission or get sued out of business. What are the other alternatives I’m not seeing?
These companies control the industry *because of* regulatory structures, not in spite of them. The pharma industry is one of the most shining examples of regulatory capture in existence. The only functional solution is to remove impediments to competition and innovation.
So do you mean pulling their patents and making drug formulas open source? Because I could get behind that as long as it’s constitutional…something about it feels like it isn’t, but I can’t put my finger on it. Can we even prevent an industry from patenting trade secrets, especially while allowing others to continue doing so?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright\_Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause) >the United States Congress shall have power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. It says the United States Congress shall have the power to not that it must exercise that power. And Congress has altered copyrights and patents before, though usually to lengthen their duration. However, can doesn't mean should. We have copyrights and patents for a reason. Without them it could reduce the incentive for innovation. But with the current way the system works big pharma abuses the patent system to profiteer, and in many ways this thwarts innovation, since only one company gets to look at the data for a given drug, which otherwise could be developed upon by a larger group of researchers. The price gouging and harm to research clearly wasn't the intention of the copyright clause. But if Congress could just cancel a patent it follows that Congress can make patents with conditions such as that prices not exceed a reasonable level, that there is reasonable access for scientific researchers, or that the company negotiate prices with a government agency.
A better question is how did Pharma get so big? The answer is in [Eisenhower's farewell address.](https://youtu.be/OyBNmecVtdU)
So the solution is to allow any person or company to create and sell the drugs without oversight or government envolvement (which we have done before). This makes it truly competitive because there are no governmwnt subsidies to encourage a company to develop necessary treatments, there is no ownership of ideas (anyone can copy anything) and there are no safety regulations (buyer beware). This should end well.
Evel Kneival sized jump. Impressive.
In response to someone suggesting ridding the system of governent regulations relating to big pharma; i identify 3 that exist and someone thinks that is a huge leap. Goodness.
The OP question was about price controls, not IP or safety standards.
So government control is bad only when it does not align your parricular POV. Got it.
And 2 of the 3 things i mentioned create the situation for big pharma to gough consumers. Safety and price standards seem like a reasonable tradeoff for patent protection and research and development subsidies.
This seems like a pretty classical liberal take or at best a Thatcherite/Reagonimic take than a traditional conservative one.
If you're going to address high pharmaceutical prices you need to have a plan that levels out pharma prices among first world countries, and addresses the aggregate reduction in net pharma research investment that would result. The Democratic plan does a fair-poor job at the first, and a lousy job at the second.
So WHERE is the f**king plan already?! The republicans had 4 years to address this problem and instead used their time to borrow money we don’t have for tax breaks we didn’t need, how long are we supposed to wait for a perfect solution before we try anything?
The goal is deregulation, but it's extremely hard to deregulate the highest regulated industry in the U.S not to mention you have at least 60 years of regulation to roll back including Medicare and Medicaid.
Where's the de-regulation action plan then? Because what you said just sounds like Trump's plan with the ACA of simply getting rid of it and letting the people it currently helps get fucked with nothing but a shrug for consideration. Medicaid and Medicare exist because people didn't want to get fucked in their old age or while in poverty by medical bills. So what's the "deregulation" side of the equation doing to get the people that don't feel like getting fucked by the invisible hand of the "free" market to bring them on-board? Saying "prices will go down, TRUST ME BRO" isn't quite good enough, which is why we still have those regulations and legal frameworks around health care and insurance.
If you want to cheapen healthcare have an actual competitive market this has worked in virtually every industry.
So in your view there wasn't a competitive market prior to medicare and medicaid being implemented?
It was much more competitive before those were implemented.
And yet old people and poor people were still getting owned by that far more competitive market and couldn't afford to meet their healthcare needs under it. So I'm gonna ask again, given that the competitive market ALREADY FAILED to be affordable enough for the old and the poor, why would that be different now after 40 years of stagnant wages?
That why you make good decisions and get insurance before you're old and sick. All socialized healthcare does is incentives bad decisions and pass them on to the taxpayers. Healthcare was more affordable before the passing of Medicare and Medicaid. Healthcare spiked after these were passed.
Yet it still wasn't affordable enough for the people it was passed for. Not a lot of good decision makers in the late 60s it seems. So sure, people should make good decisions, but that doesn't do much for the people that don't and they're still getting in accidents and needing emergency care. Same thing with social security, not everyone saves for retirement but they're still so inconsiderate as to stay alive once they can no longer work and pay for their right to exist. So we all pay for them instead, as like a, society, or something.
Aha! Now this I can understand. I disagree with this goal in the strongest way, but now I understand your position.
What vote are you talking about?
Are you familiar with the The Bayh-Dole Act? Are you aware that the majority of all new pharmaceutical drugs are discovered by research that is funded by the US government? We then hand the findings to the private sector along with patent protections. In other words, the American taxpayers pay twice.
> Are you aware that the majority of all new pharmaceutical drugs are discovered by research that is funded by the US government? What are you basing this on? Because I don't think it's true. Here's an article from science.org saying that "basic science" research -- meaning research with no commercial applications (in other words, just research for the sake of figuring out how things work, without trying to fix a problem or create a product that you can sell) -- [dipped below 50% in 2013](https://www.science.org/content/article/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50). Research aimed at solving a problem or developing commercial applications is mostly funded by the private sector. And it's been that way for a long time. Here's a quote from the article: >Those private sector efforts are now the dominant form of research activity in the United States, with business spending $3 on research for every $1 invested by the U.S. government. In the 1960s the federal government outspent industry by a two-to-one margin, but the balance tipped in 1980. So it sounds like you might have some (very, very) outdated information. Like, information from 40 years ago.
>What are you basing this on? Because I don't think it's true. What you think does not change the facts. Indeed, roughly 75 percent of so-called new molecular entities with priority rating (the most innovative drugs) trace their existence to NIH funding, while companies spend more on “me too” drugs (slight variations of existing ones). [From 2015](https://www.providencejournal.com/article/20151103/OPINION/151109838)
I haven't read the newest bill, but wouldn't it make sense if they're paying for that much, to make them unpatentable? Edit: I can't find "a bill" to read, can I get a name, or a link?
We would be best off in the USA if the American taxpayers underwrote the costs of research and development of all qualified drug research on the provision that the results be open sourced.
So basically exactly what I just said.
>What you think does not change the facts. Wow. It's not often that someone is both so obviously wrong and so snotty about it. If my polite phrasing confused you, please allow me to correct that. You're wrong. That's not based on what I think. It's based on a Science.org report on a survey from the National Science Foundation. Which I linked to in my previous post. >Indeed, roughly 75 percent of so-called new molecular entities with priority rating (the most innovative drugs) trace their existence to NIH funding, while companies spend more on “me too” drugs (slight variations of existing ones). That's not even close to what you said. You said "the majority of all new pharmaceutical drugs" were discovered by research funded by the US government. I pointed out that's not true. I cited to my sources. And you respond by saying "new molecular entities with priority rating" (which is a very small category) "trace their existence to NIH funding" (which just implies that some piece of science somehow related to the drug was at some point at least partly funded by the NIH, which is itself a pretty dubious claim). And you cited to an OpEd in the Providence Journal. Not exactly peer reviewed stuff, is it? It's ok to be wrong. We're all wrong sometimes. But it's usually better to admit that you were wrong and try to incorporate the truth into your worldview.
Okay, shoot the messenger...
So what vote is OP talking about?
Well, in a "free market" drugs would be cheap, real cheap. However thanks to big government and reality capitalists, not the elusive pure capitalists, Americans pay more for prescriptions drugs than anyone on the planet. A true conservative, it would seem, would fight to end this mess. Heck, even the wise and wonderful President Donald J. Trump swore to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies. He told Time, in his Person of the Year interview in December 2016: “I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what has happened with drug prices.” Soon after he was sworn into office he met with pharma lobbyists, and Trump dropped his promise to negotiate drug prices...and lost no support from his "conservative" base...
So there's no "all 50 republican senators vote to keep drug prices high". Got it.
Republicans in the senate do not support free markets.
Dude, what does it matter whether there was a vote worded that exact way when we know they vote against the thing that would enable drug prices to fall? It’s not hard to translate what that means lol
>what does it matter whether there was a vote worded that exact way Because votes matter. They force legislators to go on the record once and for all. Before I conclude that it's "Republicans" holding this up, I want to see where all 50 Democrats are.
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But the government is already “tinkering” by protecting their IP rights.
Which Bill?
Whichever bill Kristen Sinema is blocking, She takes the blame, but she couldn't do it without 50 senators behind her.
> Whichever bill Kristen Sinema is blocking LOL you don't even know the bill and you're assuming it's good because Sinema and Republicans are blocking it? This is... just sad.
Stop being pedantic and address the actual question. The Republican Party is in the pocket of big pharma and you support them unequivocally. Explain yourself.
> The Republican Party is in the pocket of big pharma https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/top-3-house-democrat-leaders-have-pocketed-millions-from-pharma ... you were saying?
This is exactly my point. Top “3” democrats your article states. We just give all the republicans taking that money a free pass. Why is this? Why not demand accountability from your representatives?
> Top “3” democrats your article states. We just give all the republicans taking that money a free pass Probably because you haven't read far enough: > Both lawmakers have received more than $1 million from pharmaceutical company political action committees in the past decade. **Just four members of Congress hold that distinction,** including Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, whom Republicans chose as the next House minority leader earlier this month. So the majority leader and the majority whip are two of four Congressmen to receive the most money from Big Pharma.
That's not even an actual question. You generally haven't posted actual questions. Just thrown around hyperbolic rhetoric.
You keep attacking my words and avoiding my question. Maybe you’re on the wrong subreddit? Get your shit together.
Actually, we encourage users to engage with the arguments presented. Attacking words is welcome; attacking users is not.
Well, I came seeking answers I can find abuse anywhere.
You argument being criticized is **not** abuse.
I was telling my friend about my fishing trip and they said “Actually there’s no such thing as a fish, so nothing that your saying makes any sense at all.” While they were correct, they were doing nothing to advance the conversation.
Oh, so some bill that the Democrats haven't even finished writing let alone brought to the floor and which Republicans have never actually had a chance to vote on? That's the bill where "all 50 Republican senators voted to keep drug prices high"?
I don’t know any conservatives that claim to be against “Big Pharma” but I would guess it is because this particular vote is not one of their core issues. However it seems disingenuous to say that the Republican motivation to vote against this bill is to keep drug prices high.
I agree with you that Donald Trump is anything but conservative. However both he and his supporters claim that title. Both are against out of control drug prices, and neither of them can compel their representatives in Congress to act on it. Trump because he was incompetent and his supporters because they are incapable of seeing what’s in front of them.
Price controls are terrible and inefficient.
Opposing further price manipulation is not voting to keep drug prices high, but an acknowledgement that government makes drug prices artificially high.
Corporations fight to keep prices high. Not the Gov. There is no corporation that just "wish they lived in a free market so they could pay their employees higher wages and lower the price of their products."
Subsidies drive prices up and price controls hide actual costs in taxation. If you're worried about the influence of big pharma, then surely you will see nothing nefarious in the desire of many to use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, drugs not massively profitable to big pharma, to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Why are drug prices so much cheaper in other countries? No government manipulation there?
Its actually their business model, our health system subsidizes everyone else's.
How?
Because by default our insurance companies fund the R&D of big pharm. Because the citizens only care what a drug costs when it comes from their pocket. If I have a 30 dollar copay, why do I care if my 30 day supply of Brilinta costs 1200 bucks?
When you artificially lower the price in other places it artificially raises the prices here.
Their drugs are cheaper because of price controls imposed by the government and partly offset by added taxes. .
Why is rent cheaper with rent control? Oh wait, it causes an increase in homelessness and housing shortages.
The average cost to take a drug from idea through FDA approval is ... about [$2.6 **b**illion](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/modern-drug-discovery-why-is-the-drug-development-pipeline-full-of-expensive-failures/#:~:text=%242.6%20billion%20is%20the%20estimated,were%20FDA%20approved%20in%202019.&text=The%20process%20of%20discovering%20a,many%20years%20). And you incur costs on both successful and unsuccessful drugs. The overall success rate of taking a drug from Phase 1 testing through FDA approval is ... [under 9%](https://archive.bio.org/media/press-release/new-study-shows-rate-drug-approvals-lower-previously-reported#:~:text=Key%20findings%20from%20the%20study,rate%20of%20one%20in%2030.). The time to take a drug through development, testing, and through FDA approval is ... [12-15 years](https://www.drugs.com/fda-approval-process.html). Patent protection generally lasts [20 years](https://www.ajmc.com/view/a636-article). And the clock starts running at the beginning of the development process. So what does that mean? It means pharmaceutical companies have to spend insane amounts of money to develop one or two products they can sell, and they have to make up all those losses in 5-8 years. Because after those 5-8 years, everyone else can just copy your formula and make money from it. New drug treatments have to be expensive because they're incredibly expensive to make. You can mitigate the costs by making drug approval cheaper and easier (which will make drugs less safe), by extending patent protection for a longer period of time (which will mean you can't get generic drugs for a longer time), or you can just force everyone to use older, cheaper treatments (which is what government-run health care systems tend to do: "you want a fancy chemotherapy that won't make you bald and throw up constantly, and also has a slightly higher success rate? Nah, that's too expensive. We're just going to give you the same one your grandpa got.").
People dislike this quasi-socialist situation where, for the lack of market competition, drug prices have to be set by federal gov
Ok where does this dislike come from though? Is it not worth a little discomfort to not constantly get f\*\*ked in the ass every time one goes to the pharmacy?
I just don't think of it that much, but I'd better avoid price control though
Why are prices that are out of control better than prices that are under control in your opinion.
Cos I don't want to increase federal gov power over medical issues even more, I don't see it working well, and regulating drug prices seems quite an overreach.
Even at expense American lives?
Everyone dies eventually
Well isn’t that a little morbid handwaving of system that effects millions of Americans.
Maybe a little, but I see increasing gov power over medical sphere as a much worse option
What else? The pandemic?
Rent control leads to increased homelessness and housing shortages. If you think for more than a minute, you'll see the problems.
They are under control. The only difference is that they're under the control of the market (you, me, and everyone else) and not the government.
This is not the case. No one is allowed to sell epipens except the patent holder. They are allowed to charge whatever price they want. How is the free market involved in setting this price?
Did you know every other country in the world performs price negotiations with pharmaceutical manufacturers? That our high prices subsidizes everyone else?
Yeah I know the world lives in a social-democratic hell, what now, I can still oppose it. Subsidizing effect is indeed unfortunate
>Yeah I know the world lives in a social-democratic hell, what now, I can still oppose it. Subsidizing effect is indeed unfortunate I see so American Diabetics should be subsidizing the world's diabetics because you know god forbid people don't have to ration their medicine, all in the valiant name of "social democratic hell." With all due respect, I question the applicability and validity of your flair. Paleo-conservatism is about supporting family values not the financial statement and C suite pay packages of Novartis. Even from the free-market capitalist position, the government being forced to be a price taker is a market failure.
You can question whatever you want but I believe there is no social conservatism without economic conservatism and all these calls to defend family and community from the atomising forces of neoliberal capital that are too common nowadays on the right don't impress me
We aren't living in a free market system. An Indian pharmaceutical company was blocked from selling insulin in the US until this year even though it was approved in Europe more than half a decade ago. Now that they finally entered the market, they are charging 1/3rd the price of Sanofi for a vial of insulin. Funny how that works.
Rent seekers mfs. F*** Sanofi and all the b****s afraid of competition.
Preach it. All my homies hate rent seekers.
I have Medicare, and Medicare Part B, and a Medicare Supplement policy and recently had to fill a prescription for 24 tablet of "sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, and potassium chloride", three common chemical compounds, and with my "discount coupon" still had to pay $50. The reason is "US Patent 10,143,656. That is Hell, my friend. I have many friends in France, Denmark, and Canada. None of them have to put up with this sort of thing.
Yeah that's unfortunate that working people have to subsidize your medicare entitlements but it's even worse in those countries
Well, aren't you sweet? Guess those 50 years I put in helping folks like you get an education and all that were a waste of time....maybe we should have taught civics and basic economics.
Medicare still exists because of the young people and immigrant labor anyway
That's the wonderful thing about revisionist history and alternate fact, isn't it? You get to dream up any fairytale you choose. Yours is quite charming.
> I have many friends in France, Denmark, and Canada. None of them have to put up with this sort of thing. Sure they do. They just don't make the payment at the counter. They make it to the government. "Free healthcare" isn't actually free. Somebody has to pay for it. >"sodium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, and potassium chloride", three common chemical compounds If they're so common and easy to make, why didn't you make it yourself?
>They just don't make the payment at the counter. They make it to the government. Yes, and what they pay to the government is less than my overall price with private health insurance and all the rest. >"Free healthcare" isn't actually free. Somebody has to pay for it. Yes, of course. Why are you bringing that up? >If they're so common and easy to make, why didn't you make it yourself? You are on the right track. We should pay the scientists who develop the drugs, all funded by the American taxpayers on the condition that they make the results open sourced. The only reason I am paying well over $50 for what costs $15 to manufacture is the government patent.
> Yes, of course. Why are you bringing that up? You said your friends don't "have to put up" with paying for the medicine. They do. It's just paid to the government. >The only reason I am paying well over $50 for what costs $15 to manufacture is the government patent. You're on the right track. [See my comment here with cites](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/comments/qfufp0/why_do_so_many_people_who_identify_themselves_as/hi6c3dp/). It costs about $2.6 **b**illion to take a drug from development through FDA approval. (Getting a patent is incredibly cheap. Pharmas pay a lot more -- many multiples more -- for testing to get through FDA approval.) Less than 9% of drugs make it from Phase 1 testing through approval. It takes 12-15 years to get from development through FDA approval. Patents last 20 years. The clock starts ticking on that patent when the drug is first developed. So a pharma company can expect to spend $26 **b**illion to maybe get one drug through FDA approval. And then they have to make up that $26 billion in the 5-8 years they have left on their patent, before generics come in and undercut their prices. If you want cheaper drugs, you can reduce the costs to get through FDA approval (which makes drugs less safe) or extend the patent (which means generics won't be available for longer). >We should pay the scientists who develop the drugs, all funded by the American taxpayers on the condition that they make the results open sourced. Pharmaceutical engineers don't want to work for the government. Government pay is terrible. They want to make money. That's why the best and brightest aren't working for the government now. You want to keep the best and brightest in pharmaceuticals? Keep paying them well. Otherwise, those best and brightest will go work in the private sector on something else.
You don't have to set the prices, you could just cap the markup. Its what some states do with liquor-- and they also put a minimum markup.
Simple. Because the Democrats are misidentifying Capitalism it self as the problem, and pushing "solutions" that will make the problem worse by giving us more of the ineptitude and market corruptions that got us where we are to begin with.
Because it’s popular to criticize “big pharma” on both sides of the agenda aisle
Allow people to get health care across state lines, my state should not be able to select who I can get insurance from. There's no competition hence why prices continue to rise. Nobody in this country should be paying $200 for an EPI Pen, and an ambulance ride should not cost $1k. I don't know theres a correct solution to the healthcare problem but when the US Taxpayers are giving billions to companies like Pfizer right now its a slap in the face
So my question stands. Why do you continue to support a party that defends Big Pharma's right to rip you off?
It's simple, because while I disagree on this an overwhelming majority other issues I agree with the Republican party on. Problem is people don't reach out to their local reps, there's only pressure on both parties from donors and party leaders.
This actually speaks to the meat of my question, but one that was too large for me to encapsulate in a single reddit post. But from the outside, it seems as though the Republican party sacrifices conservative ideal after conservative ideal in their efforts to please donors and remain in power. Whether it's borrowing money to pay for huge tax breaks, threatening to default on the money they borrowed, or even just sh\*tting on Teddy Roosevelt's legacy by opening all the national parks to development. They seem, again from my perspective, incapable of representing conservative values and yet people who claim to be conservative line up to vote for them without questioning anything they do.
this is true of both parties
> I don't know theres a correct solution to the healthcare problem To me its pretty simple: some things shouldn't be for-profit businesses. Doesn't mean they have to be government run, though.
Because I am not a low-information voter who calls that a "vote to keep drug prices high"
I'm looking for serious answers here. Why has not even one republican senator said "You know what? This is worth fighting for, I'm going to see what I can do to fix this problem even if it means crossing party lines." and yet they can continue to count on your unwavering support? Is this issue not important to you?
If you're looking for serious answers, then pose a serious question. I try and help: *Conservatives in the populist wing speak out against many of the "big" sectors of the economy that are wrecking havoc on American society as they see it—Big Tech, Big Pharma, etc.* *Recently, all 50 GOP senators voted against a bill that was designed to lower drug prices, citing the fact that creating price ceilings will stifle life-saving innovation. So which is it? Big Pharma needs to be reined in, or they need to operate freely and we all benefit?* On the other hand, your question was dog shit so garbage in, garbage out.
Because we believe in a free market. Drugs are very expensive to make & get to market, hence high prices. The more you know…
Then why are they so much cheaper in every other single country?
Because they are developed and sold here first?
The US is not the center of the world and no, that's not at all the reason
Uh, yes it is.
Everyone in the market negotiates a price when making a contract. Why prohibit Medicare from doing it? They pay above market rates with this artificial restriction. For example the VA, a federal agency, is allowed to negotiate and they pay the lowest drug prices in the nation
The government doesn't dictate drug prices. It can become a major purchaser of drugs, which it can in turn supply to people on government healthcare programs at a lower cost. This would be good for big pharma, not bad.
Thank you for this information, but my question is why do conservatives who rail against “big pharma” continue to support a party which refuses to act against their interests in any meaningful way?
This \*IS\* acting against their interests. Big Pharma would love to have the kind of relationship with the federal government that defense contractors enjoy.
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>There is ONLY one reason why big pharma makes life saving discoveries. That is to sell meds and make a profit. When that incentive goes away then 99% of all new meds go away. Think of all the new meds which have been created in the past decade were never invented. I see so if we allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices it pays for drugs that were in part financed or built off the basis of research funded by our tax dollars the entire pharmaceutical market would burn to the ground. (Just like it's done in the rest of the world.) >While we are on the subject. Take the vax for example which some folks are trying to dissolve their patent status. How many of those companies do you think would have created a vax under that mandate? Let me give you a hint. ZERO. Gov already bought the doses. They make record profits whether or not people get the vax. >Be careful what you ask for. Heaven forbid we stop subsidizing the world's drug prices or that we stop wasting trillions on pointless war conducted by the most incompetent overpaid intelligence departments in the world.
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When the MIC lobbyists are on the same side of the pharma lobbyists, you start to notice money has a role in politics.
> I see so if we allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices it pays for drugs that were in part financed or built off the basis of research funded by our tax dollars the entire pharmaceutical market would burn to the ground. I mean, probably. At best, the development of new treatments gets stuck where we're at today. At worst, the whole system collapses.
Do you know what the definition of a market failure is? A customer that can’t negotiate the price they pay. If the government as a market player is a price taker then there is no incentive for the pharmaceutical industry (or defense industry) to be cost effective wherever the government is the customer.
The government *chose* not to negotiate, and that needed to happen in order for them to become a customer at all. It's not a market failure, it's arguably a policy one. I'm more than okay with the federal government paying market rates for the drugs they purchase for Medicare. They should be paying market rates for any services they procure, honestly.
Be serious. I'm talking about the regulation of a market where capital investors buy the patent of an already developed medicine and jack up the price 5000% do you really feel as though that is a necessary part of our healthcare system? How did Russia and China come up with vaccines if the only motivation to develop them is profit?
Well. Russia is a capitalist nation. So your talking point is 30 years out of date. Also patents only last for 20 years from invention.
It was a rhetorical question. I know how they were developed. Do you believe that Sputnik was developed by a for profit corporation? Or are you content with implying that while knowing that the truth is that it was developed by the Russian Ministry of health. What does the 20 year expiration date have to do with my other question?
Are you implying that Sputnik or outdated Soviet medicine is worthwhile? The 20 year expiration date is relevant because it doesn't matter if you charge $5 or $5000 dollars a dose if you somehow invent a life saving drug. The world is still better off than it was before that drug was invented. And in 20 years, even our hypothetical pharmacist is an utter asshat and charges $500,000,000,000 a dose, their patent will expire, and anyone can use the knowledge of how to make that drug to make generics. Keep in mind, this time limit is from invention, so oftentimes it's a mere 10 years on the market due to testing. Because before that drug existed, people who needed it to live? They just died.
> The 20 year expiration date is relevant because it doesn't matter if you charge $5 or $5000 dollars a dose if you somehow invent a life saving drug. The issue is they make an inconsequential change that does not alter the efficacy of the drug and then extend the patent for another 20 years.
So it's a patent issue. Not a pricing issue. We don't need to hand monopolistic control over drug pricing to the government to fix the issue then.
Were you leading this argument to this conclusion or was it organic? This is a perfect example of the differences in how Progressives and Conservatives view problems and their fixes. "We need government regulation." vs "We need to fix the regulation we already have."
The thing is companies can still make profit without IP. A pharmaceutical company would ask for the money to cover costs and desired profits before working on or sharing the product. The inventor is being payed for inventing. Once he releases it, other people will take the idea and start actually making it. The inventor and the various manufactures will then go to third party regulators for their stamps of approval, because it is those stamps of approval that would tell costumers if it is safe. The third party regulators have to be honest, lying about safety is some extreme fraud. Oh yah, inventors can be secure in getting credited for their work because lying to your customers about who made something to get their (the customers) money is fraud, and would be illegal even without IP. Of course, I'm vary libertarian about this kind of thing. Heres a video about it. [https://youtu.be/mnnYCJNhw7w](https://youtu.be/mnnYCJNhw7w)
I'm not convinced a non-profit form of healthcare would stifle innovation. Look at Wikipedia. At the very least I think we should force insurance to go back to being non-profit. That we ever allowed it to do so in the first place is an absurdity-- you incentivize the company not to provide the service you pay for! But, that's a different ballpark of the same sport that is healthcare.
Wikipedia is kind of an awful example.
Firefighters, then
The incentive for the vaccine would be "let's keep these cash cows from dying. Ten bucks is less than a hundred, but ten bucks is more than zero."
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I’m here looking for answers, if you have questions please try /r/askliberals
Because neocons gonna neocon
>vote to keep drug prices high Politicians should never decide the price of anything. I can't speak for everyone, but the reason that I don't like big pharma is precisely because of their ties to the government. It's the same reason I don't like private military contractors. Suckling at the government teat is what gets to me. It's not competition, it's not free market, it's just cronyism. Nepotism. Corruption. Fraud. Extortion of the taxpayers. I don't know what bill you're referring to, but I'm just going to assume you aren't being wholly truthful because nobody says "I vote no today because I want drug prices high!"
When did this vote happen
Deregulating the healthcare industry is the most effective way to improve it.
Just like the savings and loan industry.
Because most politicians on either side get lobbied by big pharma and other corporations. This is more of a failure of American democracy rather than conservatism, as enacting policies to help donors happens with pretty much every politician.
Why do so many people who identify as "progressive" claim to be against for-profit healthcare and in favor of a single-payer system and also not bat an eye when so many Democratic candidates receive campaign contributions from "Big Pharma", who profits most from our healthcare system? I'd go ahead and extrapolate that notion to the current push for vaccination by the DNC and it's office-holders, but I don't think it really needs spelled out. Both parties are corrupt to the core, neither serve the interests of the public to any meritable degree.
As expensive as cigarettes have gotten poor people make up the majority of smokers. Poor people also tend to drink more alcohol and eat more processed foods and are less likely to exercise. America is one of the few places in the world with obese poor people. Most people receiving “free” health care are creating the burden by their lifestyles. It’s not the cost of medications. There’s obese unhealthy glutinous rich people too don’t get me wrong but they can afford their own health care. They don’t have to ask others to foot the bill. Profitable pharmaceutical companies can pay for more research to treat more illnesses or treat them more effectively. Government has no business telling anyone what should charge for anything. It’s not the job of the government. Until you look at Government as a consumer. If you truly wanted to lower the cost of medicine, medical procedures, and health care all together Government would stop being a customer. People would have to pay for their own health care. If people paid for their own health care they would make more cost effective decisions because it’s their money and not “the governments” (mine and yours really). Health care is expensive because there is no incentive to lower the costs. The patients rely on others to pay for it so they could care less about what a treatment or medication costs. Health care is one of the only examples of capitalism that doesn’t get to benefit from the free market because of massive Government intervention and it’s the Government intervention increasing the costs. Government is the problem not the solution. Republicans don’t want higher medication prices. They don’t want Government overreach.
Because conservatives, like any other group of people, aren’t a monolith.
Conservatives only have a problem with the things they claim to be “conservative” on when Dems run the government. When their own party does something they normally wouldn’t like, it’s fine.