from Hacker News

U.S. Consumers Foot the Bill for Cheap Drugs in Europe and Canada

by sunsure on 10/14/13, 3:30 PM with 21 comments

• by reillyse on 10/14/13, 5:21 PM

  Wait a second.

  There are two strange assumptions in this article. One that paying more for something makes it better. And secondly profits gained are always reinvested in research and development.

  Paying more for something does not make it better especially in the realm of healthcare. There are lots of reports and studies that show that American spending on healthcare is one of the highest in the world and among comparable nations it's health outcomes are the lowest (basically american consumers are getting fleeced). Here is an article from our friends at Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/07/10/united-states-healt...

  So paying more for healthcare does not mean better outcomes.

  To bring it back to the drugs debate, perhaps it is the American consumers that are getting ripped off and paying higher amounts for drugs doesn't result in better drugs being developed but instead just results in higher profits for drug companies.

  Drug companies are private enterprises. They don't exist for the public good, but they exist to make money. So higher profits WILL result in more money being removed and not invested in R&D. If the companies weren't doing this they wouldn't be living up to their responsibilities as corporations.

• by paulgb on 10/14/13, 5:20 PM

  "Abroad, where the “negotiation” consists of governments telling you what they are willing to pay, even as you know that they can always change the law to shorten your patent term so that other countries can manufacture your product, using your research for free."

  The author doesn't mention any examples of this actually happening, which makes me wonder if it's just theoretical. Does it happen?

  Also, how much of big pharma's costs goes to marketing? They don't have consumer marketing expenses outside the USA.

• by brohoolio on 10/14/13, 8:27 PM

  Kind of a crappy article. It focuses on new drug innovation when most of the markup we are seeing in the US is for old drugs. As an individual you can't negotiate when you need a drug.

  It's up to a regulatory body to make sure the manufacturers aren't exploiting their position in the market.

• by moocowduckquack on 10/14/13, 5:34 PM

  "The most hopeful thing I can say, in fact, is that we may naturally be running out of feasible drug candidates, so maybe it doesn’t matter much."

  I'd hate to have the mental-state that regarded such a situation as 'the most hopeful thing I can say'. Is almost as though the author has been briefed that higher prices are the aim here.

  Also, if you look at research money on the diseases that affect the most people, it is mostly not coming from big-pharma anyway, but rather from state backed research, much of it from the countries that the author reckons are raising US drug prices. Personally, I suspect that the main reason for high drug prices in the US is actually having such a massive army of middlemen who do not have interests aligned with the patient, but that is only a guess.

• by msandford on 10/14/13, 5:04 PM

  That's one of the things that sucks about IP law. It'll never be standardized internationally so those places where it's strict, prices are high. In nations where it's looser, prices are low. We pay the government to enforce laws that keep our prices up. It's kind of a bummer.