Why hundreds of decades-old yet vital drugs are nearly impossible to find
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Of course they would personally pocket all the savings, and use it to buy for themselves everything they deny to everyone else in the name of "efficiency". I guarantee you none of the pharmaceutical company execs are going to miss one dose of their meds.
For instance, if the government changed it's rules that price is a competition, and instead of the order going 100% to the "winner", it would go 70% to the winner, 20% to the second place, 10% to the third, that would help a lot.
However, looking at other sectors, somehow Toyota and Honda seem to make decent money off of low-margin Corollas and Civics with superior build quality, but American car manufacturers are ditching their sedans because they "aren't profitable enough". Many of our supply chain issues strike me as something similar. American business leaders love to claim "hate the game not the player" when they do something predatory, but then bitch and moan when the government occasionally tries to make the game less predatory. Likewise they'll cheat, but when regular people try to cheat as well they get called out with "yeah we cheated but two wrongs don't make a right!". Funny how that 1st wrong is always in their favor, and it's only the 2nd wrong that isn't allowed to happen and must be punished.
I don't trust the government, but I trust the private sector even less. Never mind that private sector lobbying is half the reason I don't trust the government.
Honestly half the problem is you call bribery "lobbying". Why on earth companies are allowed to donate mega millions to a politician is insane.
> Why on earth companies are allowed to donate mega millions to a politician is insane.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/citizens_united_v._federal_e...
and soon corporations will be able to vote
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-06-30/delaware-...
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC):
He argued that the court's ruling "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution." He added: "A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."
I'd say do something about it, but your corporate overlords won't let you!
It's going to get worse.
https://www.wcnc.com/article/weather/severe-weather/pfizer-r...
Not sure if there is any tracking in the alphanumeric garbage at the end, but deleting it outright causes it to 404.
https://wcnc.com/article/a/b/c-eb35781b-ac79-4399-955a-dcece...
Of course, this url is now assuredly unique
Actually I was just trying to Rickroll-you-by-proxy. A shorter link to the same site as GP's that is a real news story of people being Rickrolled by QR codes on fake parking tickets.
Only reason I used the site's own shortner is the URL would have given it away. Besides it was longer.
It’s a ridiculous headline, I know. But, that is the gist of this article. It just doesn’t say so. Pharmaceutical drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated. It is very expensive to comply with drug manufacturing and distribution regulations. Those regulatory expenses are so high that it is simply not profitable enough for any company to produce these cheap generic drugs at a sustainable profit. It doesn’t make sense for a pharmaceutical company to comply with all regulations and make a profit on inexpensive, generic drugs.
The real headline is “Generic Drugs are Over Regulated, Making Them too Expensive to Produce”
Your claim is that the market cannot deal with increased costs of a product.
which might be true, if the person cannot afford it at this higher price, despite needing the medication. For example, the gov't subsidies for these people aren't high enough.
Despite what people might think, medication and healthcare is not absolutely inelastic.
1. essential medicines that can save lives and promote well being
and
2. weapons that are intended to maim and kill other humans.
In a democracy, the voters are responsible for that difference.
The WHO list of Essential Medicines is a very low bar that any advanced nation should be able to exceed. The fact that something as common as albuterol is currently in shortage, is a national disgrace.
It seems that Executive Order 13944 has had little impact.
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/reports/executive-order-13944-...
Yes and no. We delegate power to representatives to mediate that difference, and they ultimately delegate it to a bureaucracy, hopefully filled by experts in a particular area. These bureaucracies are then funded proportional to the quality of voter chosen leadership.
So I would say voters are responsible for choosing the level of corruption when they vote, but our votes are red or blue, we don't get any kind of say in resource distribution past that unless we are beauracracy/institution participants ourselves.
About 2/3rds of US adults take at least one prescription medication.
India’s necessary relations with China, Russia, and the Middle East are just complex and it would not fit and be a major shift in power for it to align closely with American interests nor does America want to put itself in that position.
Especially for chemical precursor kinds of things where it isn’t a complexity problem but a scaling problem.
When you don’t care about cost things can be scaled up rather quickly.
Restarting a supply chain can be very difficult.
At this point, the US medical system has become a sequence of monopolies at every level. These are the consequences.
Every company with more than 20% market share in a vertical should split in half. Having 5 or 6 companies in every vertical would solve most of the monopoly problems.
10% buying power means you could drop a market player's revenue by 10%, how many businesses could weather that? (See Amazons "Project gazelle" for this in practice)
Alternatively is supply being commandeered somehow?
So much weird stuff is happening with supply chains that it feels like the US is purposefully being squeezed.
It’s not just the US.
Years ago , the Orphan Drug Act law passed by Congress in 1983 incentivized the development of drugs to treat rare diseases. It worked. It has produced numerous drugs to treat rare diseases. They are very expensive but they exist vs not existing at all. If we can get a similar act that would give incentives to manufacture these vital drugs at a reasonable price then it would be a win for everyone.
My first guess would be to have a minimum price that's equal to manufacture cost plus 15% profit.
People are going to automatically oppose it because it will raise prices but the fact is we live in a capitalist system that produces nothing unless it produces a profit too. I would rather have the drugs available that save lives and pay a bit more than not having them at all.
> have a minimum price that's equal to manufacture cost plus 15% profit.
> the fact is we live in a capitalist system
Even then PBMs are always going to be a centralizing force in the drug market leading toward a monopsony(single buyer market). Buying power is going to distort faster than large sells (10% of market buying force is very powerful, will 10% of marketing selling share is big but can be worked around)
He is arguing against his own point. The problem is a lack of supply but he is promoting the wrong political answer to a politically generated problem. In a purely capitalist economy a lack of supply would cause prices to go increase and the market would respond accordingly. This industry is highly regulated. In some cases for good reason. Regulation always stifles capitalism and results in less profit for the manufacture. The fix for to much regulation is less regulation, not more.
This argument looks pretty unappealing either way, though: "the problem with vital drugs is that they're too affordable to too many people who need them". Good luck with that political platform.
...which would cause the supply to be reduce, a slide down the demand curve, prices increase, and suddenly the margins aren't so thin, and everything bounces back. The market heals.
Why would anyone invest $$$$ to ramp up production of old generic drugs instead of new fancy drugs - especially when "new fancy" is sometimes small tweaks to get a new patent?
There's no evidence provided here that the problem is in fact that "these generics are legally prohibited from being sold for a higher price" or that too much of their sales are to government-set/negotiated-rate health-plans. There's nobody quoted here saying "if it cost 1.25x,2x,3x,10x, that would justify investment, but we can't charge more."
So if you look at what drug companies charge for patented drugs, "focus on the expensive stuff, and don't dedicate many resources to the generic pipelines" is a perfectly incentive market-based capitalistic decision for industry players to make.
Government intervention to boost supply and add redundancies to supply chains looks like a great option.
Public ownership and subsidies to support production of things critical to national interests are fairly common, and I think that would be the most appropriate in this case.
Since you believe this problem is caused be existing regulation, what regulations would you propose eliminating as a start?
not just that. discerning and intelligent consumers are key to healthy markets as well.
They have a very simple idea of market mechanics with very simple ideas of market manipulation.
If our market isn't working, it's just not "pure" enough, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_competition_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
I don't think OP has read very many books and I would be surprised if they have a bachelors degree. OP reminds me of myself during Ron Paul's "the free market solves all problems" period on Reddit. Ron Paul presented a very simple idea of how things work, but once you start to think about how those ideas don't work, it's obvious that ignorance is being taken advantage of.
Alternatively he did not respond to the best most charitable interpretation of the post. Simply put: OP's ideas wouldn't last (and aren't lasting) long outside of an ideological echo chamber.
I think a strong obvious argument against a "less regulation" panacea is that we couldn't make our own masks because the free market sent all the production to China. Sending all of our manufacturing to China because they offered the best deal gives china incredible leverage over us. Clearly the "free market" must be analyzed not just in terms of supply and demand, but also in terms of power and coercion. There is no supply/demand curve for power.
this is so cringey. and you never actually make clear what you believe… what is your actual point?
In a purely capitalist economy, those with capital would have the easiest time getting more capital, as they get more capital they get more and more influence and exist farther and farther from consequences. Then it's trivial to get things like citizens united, stock trading congress members, and regulatory capture. As ruling institutions weaken so to do the systems that enforce "pure capitalism." Thus "pure" capitalism plants the seeds of it's own destruction.
"The free market solves all problems" is 2000's Ron Paul era thought, and it is clearly very wrong.
The right results from a "free market" are not inevitable. The results, right or wrong, are a summation of the actions of it's individual participants. Culture is the first line of defense, and when culture fails, you must rely on regulation, and when regulation fails, you must rely on force.
> The fix for to much regulation is less regulation, not more.
The fix for the wrong regulation is the right regulation.
Analyzing for less and more is intellectually bankrupt and shows lack of critical thinking. Less regulation used for regulatory capture is good, less regulation used for legitimate consumer protection is bad. More regulation that stifles innovation is bad, more regulation that prevents robber barrons and bullying of small business is good.
You need to do more reading on "the tragedy of the commons." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Which shows its inherent political bias.
Calling something bias is not very different than saying "well, it's the other teams idea."
Rather than saying something is wrong, it is instead called bias. Calling it bias removes the duty to analyze the information and its relationship to truth.
Bias just describes positions on an Overton window and shortcuts critical thinking.