Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Yep, they're still evil

That would be the drug companies. Boston University School of Public Health prof. Alan Sager (with whom I am acquainted) runs down their profiteering at society's expense. I would say, do read the whole thing because it takes him 11 pages to properly debunk all of the prevalent falsehoods about this. I'll just offer you this excerpt which reiterates stuff I keep saying here, which is that the mythological and non-existent "free market" bears absolutely no resemblance to the reality of pharmaceutical development, manufacture and selling:

Unfortunately, functioning free markets are simply unattainable in health care, and the drug sector is no exception. That’s because not one of the six requirements for a competitive free market is met, or can be met, in the realm of pharmaceuticals. A market of small buyers and sellers doesn’t make the price; drug makers with patents or market power are dominant. Price competition among generics, biosimilars, and me-too brand name drugs does little to cut U.S. drug spending. Sovereign consumers don’t make decisions; they rely on physicians who are often swayed by drug makers’ marketing or detailers. Entry of new competitors can be hard; drug makers merge with competitors or acquire them to reduce competition; big vertically-integrated drug makers often finance smaller ones or buy up their discoveries. Information is asymmetric; patients lack it and doctors and drug makers have lots of it. Subtly, but importantly, the price of drugs doesn’t remotely track the cost of production. And the injunction that buyers should beware and mistrustful carries little weight in the absence of good information about which drugs are needed or valuable.
There are actually additional reasons why the fictitious "free market" doesn't come near this reality, but those are probably enough for now. As Sager explains, it is the immense political power of the drug companies, along with our generally brainwashed population, that let's them keep ripping us off.

Sager is an advocate of single payer national health care, but given that isn't happening any time soon, he offers some interim measures. Not on Hillary's docket, however, at least not so far.

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