Looks like drug prices might go up.

[corgipower]

Yah but they're out of stock

:dunno:
Not all of it is out of stock.
I should order some tomorrow while I can.

 

[Buckshot]

Buckshot, they have made profits with those drugs for years. Perfectly good ones. The problem is that they want to make obscene ones. Most of those old drugs cost almost nothing to make. They work just fine. They can be sold for a tidy profit. But the same resources can be used to make some really expensive drug instead, that may not treat the same thing, or may treat the same thing, but no better, or even not as well. But the shareholders want more money and the executives want higher salaries. So, out with the old, in with the new! Up with the prices!

Look, I understand the free market idea, and I also understand that its their equipment. And, part of the problem is that regulation makes it hard for someone else to step in and just start making the old drugs in their own facility (i.e. answering market need). Of course, there's also the problem that the drug companies have merged so many times that there aren't many left . . .

However, and this is where we will differ, there is also such a thing as greed. Plain, cold-blooded, immoral, greed. Greed that says that the profit we make from making a cheap effective drug everyone can afford is not enough, and we need to make an expensive new drug instead so we can make really BIG profits. (There's an immense amount of evidence that the drug companies focus on developing "blockbuster" drugs and "me too" drugs that we don't really need, while totally ignoring drugs we don't) MEanwhile, we'll take the old drug off the market, and push the new drug on doctors, telling them its the new wonder drug, when, um, actually, it isn't. Insurance will pay for it (rates will go up), the government will pay for it for medicare and medicaid (ripping off the taxpayer), and then people who don't have insurance (or lost theirs because they can't afford it anymore) can't buy the cheap drug, and can't afford the new one, but screw them, because we are making lots of MONEY!!

I think the corporate model is the best way to make money and create value that the world has ever seen. I think the free market is, if nothing else, the best system we've seen yet. However, I also believe in market failure, and I believe that corporations will do whatever makes them the most money, which is fine, until ordinary people get caught in the crossfire. When people are denied cheap, effective, proven medication because a company can make more money selling new, expensive medication that may or may not work as well, and thus their lives and health are effected, then society shouldn't just shrug it off.

Now, as to what the government should do . . . actually my first thought is to loosen regulations to allow a bunch of small companies to enter drug manufacuring for generics. My next thought is to loosen import regulations (though with strict quality controls). My next thought is to trust-bust the drug companies. Then come the bailouts and subsidies.

I find lawyers make obscene profits as well. I dont see what is so hard about it. Lawyers just read a few books, say a few big words and collect a huge check. Actually, I am being a bit of a smart ass there. I would not want to be tasked with doing a lawyers job, an astronauts job or making something as simple as an asprin. When it comes to a lawyer, I want one that is not driven by guilt for the peoples welfare, not driven by the force of a government but rather one that wants my money to fund his next deep sea fishing trip. I also want other people with the drive to research, create and market to have unrestricted competition. We throw the greed word around here a lot. I often have a hard time figuring who the greedy person is. Is it the person who makes millions more than he can spend in his lifetime or is it the person who expects another person to produce on the terms he calls for. I am finding that society is very accepting of forcing people to produce on societies terms.

I think we also differ on the opinion of population. I don't feel that the earth is under populated by humans.

 

[Lilavati]

I am finding that society is very accepting of forcing people to produce on societies terms.

Because. of course, society had nothing to do with their success. Law and order, good roads, infrastructure, an educational system producing excellent doctors and chemists, etc, had absolutely NOTHING do with their ability to produce in the first place. And in the case of the drug companies, regulations that limit entry had nothing to do with it either.

Instead their factories and capital investments sprung fully formed from the sweat of the Galtian brows, to provide for all us looters and moochers down here.

Give me a break. I'm not saying that they shouldn't make a profit, and definitely not that they should not make back on their investments. However, considering that a few companies have what ammounts to a monopoly on the production of medications, they are in fact pretty much assured a very nice return . . . to deny people needed medication so they can make ever larger profits (ultimately, I note, at the expense of the taxpayer and captive customers) is sheer greed. In fact, I'd go so far to call it a form of theft. I'll also note that the solutions I proposed where pretty strongly in the deregulation/free market camp.

You may not like how the system works, but its the system we have, and the drug companies are exploiting it. In your perfect anarcho-capitialist world, someone else would pick up the manufacture of these drugs. That ain't the world we live in. The drug companies make the profits they do at least in part because of the society in which they reside; and therefore society can ask things of them as well.

As for too many people. Sure, I agree with you, there are too many people, and thankfully, people are choosing, of their own free will, to have fewer children all over the world. THAT is the solution to overpopulation, not killing people who are already alive by denying them needed cheap medications.