Should Government or Big Pharma control Drug Prices?
You have drugs rocketing from $13 to $750 and cancer drugs costing $300K a year whereas you can get them up to 40% cheaper in other countries.
On the other hand, if the Govt caps drugs prices, it may kill innovation. Also, competition may build generic drugs which lower prices.
Where do you stand?
The insurance should just cap the amount they will pay to 500 buck, eventually the price would be 500, unless you can prove you need to charge more. I wonder if a guy was in a desert and was dying of thurst if you could legally sell him a bottle of water for a million dollars? 
Tim Duncan - The insurance should just cap the amount they will pay to 500 buck, eventually the price would be 500, unless you can prove you need to charge more. I wonder if a guy was in a desert and was dying of thurst if you could legally sell him a bottle of water for a million dollars?
What if that guy was Donald Trump?
No
My friend's cancer medicine is $9000 a month, shit is insanity, insurance picks up the tab ($1500 a month for that though) so it all works out, but good fucking googly moogly.
Nope
If you want companies to stop making new drugs and discontinue expensive ones that's the way to do it.
Brockback Mountain - If you want companies to stop making new drugs and discontinue expensive ones that's the way to do it.I hear what you are saying, but tjat cant just be a cop out answer. Is the high prices really a function of the development cost or is it just what the market will bear.
Would you like to have innovation end?
There is so much wrong with our modern medical model.
It really needs to be unwound.
And no, price controls rarely work, not in the long term anyway.
Government intervention and subsidization seems to have caused more harm than good.
Yes. Innovation will still continue. Can't rip people off for more profits in the health and to have to say that shows how fucked up the medical industry is.
Tim Duncan -Brockback Mountain - If you want companies to stop making new drugs and discontinue expensive ones that's the way to do it.I hear what you are saying, but tjat cant just be a cop out answer. Is the high prices really a function of the development cost or is it just what the market will bear.
What if everyone just jacked the price up for everything that was essential, just because they could?
Stop them resetting and extending patents. The drug companies can cash in until the patent runs out, then the generics can come in and push the price down with competition. That's how it is supposed to work, but drug companies found out they could re-patent the same drug with a different coating or as a different salt or whatever. 
rbl - Stop them resetting and extending patents. The drug companies can cash in until the patent runs out, then the generics can come in and push the price down with competition. That's how it is supposed to work, but drug companies found out they could re-patent the same drug with a different coating or as a different salt or whatever.
rbl - Stop them resetting and extending patents. The drug companies can cash in until the patent runs out, then the generics can come in and push the price down with competition. That's how it is supposed to work, but drug companies found out they could re-patent the same drug with a different coating or as a different salt or whatever.
Hell no. The high cost of pharmaceuticals in the US keeps those costs down for the rest of us. The insane profit machine that is the American consumer market allows other governments to negotiate lower prices from Big Pharma while the Yanks get fucked in the ass without so much as a reacharound. As long as the US refuses to adopt any type of single payer system, we're happy to continue to take the subsidy.
Thanks, America.
Sincerely,
The rest of the industrialized world.
Government caused the prices
Deregulate the health industry, deregulate insurance
We had innovation when drug prices weren't insane 20 years ago. As if a drug company like GSK would fold up shop if they could only make $15 billion dollars a year instead of $30 billion (they spent around $8 billion on R&D last year).
Part of me feels like drug companies shouldn't be publicly traded due to an added pressure of increased profitability and continual growth but taking that away leads to other issues.
Why not?
we tell gas stations they cant charge 100$ a gallon if a hurrican is coming, same with stores selling 1000$ bottles of water. Gov, job is to protect its people, they can stop price gouging, I see nothing wrong with it.
I will never understand why socialists think more laws are the answer to all life's problems when (a) it never works as intended and has unforeseen side effects that make things worse and (b) problems can almost always be solved by reducing the number of laws. I know it's because they worship government in their religious stupor, but I'll never understand why.
Get rid of patent laws and watch prices tumble. It's a state sanctioned monopoly. Intellectual "property" "rights" in general are complete bullshit. Yes that's right. It's just another way for people with capital to get a leg up on people without any. Stop regulating drugs. Stop regulating ideas. Stop governing everything.