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Comment by zardo | Hacker News Reader

I guess if you want good health care at an affordable cost you should have gone to Mexico where the anti-venom that is $10,000 a vial in the US is sold (by the same company) for $100 a vial.

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It's only $100 in Mexico because the company can charge $10000 in the US. Not by some inherent virtue of the Mexican system. If the US forced costs down they'd rise everywhere else.

The US subsidizes the rest of the world in Medicine, Defense, Technology, etc...

Is the 10K price in the US due to ongoing costs, recouping R&D, paying for marketing? Because if it's not a real ongoing cost then it's just "wha'tcha got?" pricing.

I doubt they sell it so cheap in Mexico to be charitable. Which suggests they're just soaking the US market.

The lies Americans tell themselves to support their own exploitation will always amaze me.

"The reason we don't provide free healthcare to our citizens is because we have decided to provide 99% discounts for the rest of the planet instead."

Next they will tell you that they have so many homeless people because they are sending all their houses to Mexico.

This could be simply fixed by the US allowing the re-importation of drugs. Without it, we end up with monopolistic pricing.

note that this would be extremely bad for the poorer country that is currently able to purchase medicine, and would probably results in net worse health outcomes globally.

the free market is just not the correct way to set drug prices, and never has been.

Thanks to the magic of Google, I've learned that Mexican scorpion antivenom was in fact developed in Mexico, by a Mexican company, and now you did too.

https://synapse.patsnap.com/article/what-is-serum-antiscorpi...

I wonder how you justify the cost of insulin.

I don't think it's rational to believe that big pharma is giving charity to Mexico. It's $100 a vial in Mexico because that's the optimal price to sell it in Mexico to maximize profit, not because it's subsidized by unregulated price-gouging in the United States.

Does Mexico have a free market for medicine?

Why would that matter? The drug company will price their product to maximize profit in whatever regulatory regime they're selling in. (I have no idea).

Not true. Companies charge the maximum they can rationally charge in each country.

In the US, they can charge whatever they want because the system is broken, and the influence of money on politics means that it doesn’t get fixed.

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