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Originally Posted by detbuch
When you said that pharma charging "what ever they want" without any negotiation is not yoiur "idea of market forces at work . . ." it seemed on the one hand a contradiction since market forces do not negate charging what you desire so long as the buyer needs your product and is willing and able to pay your price. But pharma's prices are obviously not a result of market forces, so your comment was gratuitus.
Perhaps you are mixing market "forces" with market "economy"? Market "forces" are thos economic factors strictly peculiar to the market without government input, such as supply and demand. Market "economies" are largely driven by market "forces" but may have varying degrees of government intervention. As government control becomes greater, it becomes a mixed economy, and if that control is great or absolute, it is a centrally planned economy where market "forces" play little or no part.
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I'd think that government influence (here and abroad) as part of a free market economy would have a large impact on both supply and demand.
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As far as pharma's prices go, they seem to be a product not of market forces, but of more centrally planned forces--both in the U.S. and abroad.
In a "free" market, driven basically by market forces with little to no government intervention, prices would have to go down in the U.S. and up abroad.
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Today we have regulation that impacts both profit and loss, take away it all away and the results would be unpredictable. Perhaps lower prices from competition but also increased costs if quality standards are not maintained. Undoing a heavily regulated industry is a lot different than pretending it never existed in the first place.
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This would be so even with basic safety regulations, not with the super cautious, draconian ones of present which have massively ballooned since the thalidomide scandal of 1961-62 and have created a cozy, corrupt partnership between pharma and the FDA at the expense of free market competition and "affordable" drugs.
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I wouldn't say that proving a drug is safe and effective, or that it actually does what you claim it does...is "draconian". This relationship must be pretty unbearable what with all the private sector profit it creates.
-spence