AggieDruggist89 said:
Pompous Euros snub their nose at us fat Americans.
Like they're better, more sophisticated, superior.
Well, **** them. They should thank us for not having to speak German as their first language.
Having said that... I have no solution for the expensive drug cost today. It's the capitalism and greed at its best. And we live in it.
Ironically, it's not as much capitalism to blame as it is socialism. The reason the rest of the world gets to access our pharmaceuticals at cheaper costs, while we pay a LOT more, is because of socialized medicine capping the costs of drugs.
It's a difficult situation. Legislation on our end to balance the scales would most likely make things worse:
1. Enact price controls, forcing costs down - Costs of certain drugs would drop, but a lot of newer more expensive therapies would be no longer be offered. R&D for rare diseases would be halted. Overall quality of Healthcare decreases.
2. Reverse price controls - Prevent drug companies from selling U.S. developed drugs X+% less to other countries to what they do here. A subset of key drugs would become cheaper here, while other countries would be forced to adjust their socialized healthcare to pay more. Less used drugs or drugs with alternatives manufactured outside the U.S. would be dropped, further increasing prices of those drugs here. Profit margin on rare disease drugs would take a hit due to the drop in foreign sales, so less of those would be developed going forward. Foreign pharmaceutical companies and their home countries might also retaliate, increasing the U.S. prices of drugs they produce. Enacting price controls on those foreign companies in return would result in low profit drugs no longer being sold here. Overall quality of healthcare goes down, with prices being higher or lower depending on the drug in question.
So basically the rest of the world is screwing us, and idk what we can reasonably do to stop it without substantial collateral damage. Pretty much anyone with a rare disease gets royally screwed if we try to do anything.
