Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
I'm well aware of the business process regarding FDA regulated product development.
Here's the issue. There's competition for drug prices inside the US but the development is done for a global market. All that R&D funding to create the next category killer drug is being subsidized by US consumers because drugs are sold at lower costs (often via price controls) in pretty much every other nation. There really isn't a lot of real negotiation. This is government regulation that the industry is highly dependent on.
Hence my comment being in context of "market forces".
-spence
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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.
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. 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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