Who should we blame for high drugs prices: President, Senate, Congress or voters?

Price of the medicine called Acthar went from $40 a vial in 2001 to more than $40,000.
Who we should to blame: President, Senate, Congress or voters?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-problem-with-prescription-drug-prices/

 

There have been plenty of bills proposed to reduce drug prices, but AFAIK, they keep getting held up or voted down. Trump has made some proposals, how far they get who knows.

 

You need to take a college econ class on pricing.

 

So who we should blame - invisible hand increased the price of Acthar from $40 a vial in 2001 to more than $40,000? Maybe Hayek? Maybe Keynes? Maybe Richardo? Marx?

zalek

 

The question was whom should we blame? Democrats? Republicans? Stupid voters?

zalek

 

Americans subsidize drug prices worldwide. The companies soak Americans so they can charge low prices elsewhere.

We are the most generous fools on the planet.

 

What I find the most amazing about this sad story is that Questcor could market this drug to treat syphilis, migraine headaches, or colon cancer if they wanted to, and any marketing such as that can't be challenged because it's an old slaughterhouse drug put on the market before the FDA required clinical trials.

It appears that we must just accept the fact that the systems created by the partnership of science and government are just too stupid and complex to ever change for the better.

The only possible way to get rid of this shat would be drug by drug initiatives on the ballot, directly voted on by the people. That is the only thing that the lobbyists could not stop.

Who to blame? 535 people inside the beltway and the lobbyists who control them and write their laws for them.

 

Where is that funny button?

 

Naive people keep this site entertaining.

 

The government and patent laws that stifle competition.

 

Pharma companies are nothing more than legal drug pushers. You think they stop to consider any other fiduciary responsibility other than maximizing profits?

There's a reason why the largest single expenditure of pharma companies is marketing - i.e. "pushing their drugs" to both the public and their network of legal dealers (doctors and pharmacists).

The old adage that the price is the maximum the market will bear is paramount in the drug biz (amongst others). They can get away with it so they do.

Even the scumbag Skreli (or whatever) who raised the price of his drug by a gazillion %. Its still being sold for that outrageously inflated price.

 

You left out blaming the drug companies.
But then I guess you can't blame them for wanting to make money.
There are often problems when you have a monopoly. It gets worse when your well being depends on the drug.

 

This is false narrative used to justify price fixing in the US .. and it is exactly that .. a false narrative.

 

All of the above. Voters continue to elect Establishment elite. The Establishment (both Red and Blue elite in congress and the bureaucracy) work with the Establishment Oligarchs to enable price fixing, collusion, anti competitive practices and other nefarious tactics.

 

the war on drugs

 

I don't blame the Big Farma - the purpose of corporation is to make money, as much as possible. This is the reason my question was:
Who we should to blame: President, Senate, Congress or voters?
You know why dog licks his balls? Because he can.
And the Big Farma milks American consumers for the same reason. American voters trust Democrats and Republicans and Big Farma trust Americans voters - we will always elects parties who will sell us for the best price.

zalek

 

The invisible hand.

If you want to blame government for high drug prices, you can, but only because the government has been suppressing new research into new drugs since the Clinton administration. Blaming the pharmaceutical industry for the high price of drugs hasn't reduced the prices, instead it has depressed the research into new drugs. Any move to shorten the length of the patents or to limit how much the drug companies can charge for their medicines will depress research further.

"U.S. drug approvals hit a 21-year high in 2017, with 46 novel medicines winning a green light — more than double the previous year" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...rovals-hit-21-year-high-in-2017-idUSKBN1ER0P7

This compares to a peak of 55 new approvals in 1997. And while the number of companies getting into the pharmaceutical business has grown, the number of companies getting OUT of the pharma business has exploded.

 

Whoever deregulated the markets and never stepped in when things like this happened.

So mainly GOP but democrats either deregulated themselves or did nothing to stop it.

 

It's not that the prices are really high. The real issue is that pharmaceuticals are one of the last real industries protected in the U.S. from foreign competition.
People are just used to the cheap prices for everything else.

Another issue is that the majority of these pharmaceuticals are really unnecessary but are prescribed anyway. The patients don't really know the difference.
The truly beneficial pharmaceutical breakthroughs have mostly been focused on rare diseases and don't tend to be very profitable, so instead the pharmaceutical companies have been focusing on tiny incremental improvements and repackaging their drugs into a different pill with lots of marketing, once the old patent expires. Obviously the cost to actual benefit ratio is very questionable in many cases.

 

I don't see a problem with that, if it happens over the long term. But sudden price change before the supply chain has a chance to adjust is used by companies to gouge people. Because then the doctors and hospitals using the product don't really have time to adjust and plan for alternative purchases.

Pouring in research and development money into a treatment is really a lottery. Maybe some of that money will be diverted to more research, and entice other investors to pour money into other developments.

 

A lot of blame to go around, you can point fingers if you want but that isn't going to solve anything.

 

If you are not paid by Big Farma but an average American who don't see a problem when a price of medicine goes from $40 a vial in 2001 to more than $40,000 - I see a great future to Big Farma corporations, big future to Democrats and Republicans.

zalek

 

Of course not, then neither do the tobacco and alcohol industries when they advertise and push their drugs then bribe the government with taxes to look the other way to the harm both drugs are doing.

 

Who should we blame for high drugs prices: President, Senate, Congress or voters?

All of the above?

 

Then you take away any incentive for the pharmaceutical companies to invest billions in developing new drugs if the price can be set by the voters.
But if it was decided by initiatives then the voters could also set the price of a gallon of gas, how much you pay for electricity even how much your local supermarket can charge for a loaf of bread.