[Op-ed] Sanders and Khanna have a plan to lower your drug prices - Polidicks

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/417713-sanders-and-khanna-have-a-plan-to-lower-your-drug-prices From the reddest of red states to the bluest of blue, there is one unifying chorus that echoes across the United States: Prescription drug prices are too high. That’s why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill to lower drug prices for every single person in this country. The Prescription Drug Price Relief Act would force drug companies to price medicines equal to or below the median price of the same drug in five countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan. This legislation would lower drug prices for all Americans. In addition, regardless of the price in other countries, anybody who feels that their medicine is excessively priced can petition the government to lower the price. Most importantly, if companies refuse to lower their prices, then the federal government would allow generic competition in order to lower the price. Pharmaceutical corporations have spent decades wielding their political power against the best interest of the American people, with far too many members of Congress serving as their proxy employees. The result? Big Pharma’s monopoly power, and their explicit price gouging, grows worse with every passing year. But at long last, the tide is beginning to turn. People are demanding an end to outrageous drug prices, and political leaders are listening. I found almost no outlets reporting on this bill, hence the op-ed.

I want to play devils advocate here, not because I agree with the following but because I want to see someone argue against it: wouldn't keeping prices too low reduce or remove the incentive for companies to do the research and expensive testing required to create new drugs in the first place?

No, because they're already price gouging to begin with. Even when brought down to European prices, they're still making billions in profits. • Pharmaceutical R&D spending in European countries 2016 | Stat.. There's a graph showing R&D expenditures for European companies. https://europe.businesschief.com/top10/1543/Top-10-pharmaceutical-companies-in-Europe Here are the top 10 largest drug companies by revenue in Europe. They number in the tens of billions of euros. They're making plenty of money either way, and they parrot that line because it's all they have to fall back on.

They already get tons of subsidy money from the government to do this research IIRC. Plus there are Universities that do all kinds of insane drug research, then the drug companies buy the formulas/patents and hoard them to themselves so they can be the exclusive provider, but I could be wrong on that.

Yes. A lot of big pharma companies do extensive due diligence on a drug target or indication prior to initiating pre-clinical research & development and a big chunk of that is the marketplace. They want to know how many potential patients will be taking this, the level of unmet need and how badly needed their new drug would be. I can readily see a lot of big pharma moving out of therapeutic areas and into more rare diseases as the demand would be greater, less competition resulting in them still being able to gouge prices. The increase in grant funding, federal compensation and tax/R&D benefit that would have to be levied in response to the vast drop in profits would end up being substantial damage to the economies.

They already have reduced incentive in one way. The US government offers them free money to do research. That's just my opinion though.

Be great to get my Adderall prescription without it eating a good chunk of my wallet each month. God speed you magnificent bastards.

This is a great idea. I also love the method of tagging the law to an equivalent average established by other similar countries. I hope we see more of that in future.

Yeah, this is one of the major benefits for Sander's Medicare for All bill, the tax payers are paying out around 3.5 trillion which is why you hear discussion of 32.6 trillion in spending over 10 years if everyone is covered. This is because the current costs of healthcare are super-inflated and lack any cost-control to offset the massive profit incentive of this natural monopoly.

its still a half measure, set drug prices regulate the market like we did for utilities or move to a single payer system and let people who choose private insurance sort it out. We have enough bandaids on our system, I'd rather see people get pissed off enough to actually enact singlepayer healthcare instead of passing some half ass measure and people thinking job done.

Prices can be kept low, and still make a lot of money, like others have mentioned. As an example - and correct me if I'm wrong - but an EpiPen in the US costs ~$500. I can get one in Denmark for $75, and it gets cheaper each time I buy one, meaning it's actually closer to $70 by now. What pharmaceutical companies are doing in the US is nothing less than cashing in on peoples suffering.