Comment by mportela

Comment by mportela 17 hours ago

5 replies

Unfortunately, that's all the Biden administration could get written into law. The Big Pharma lobby is too strong and definitely battled to keep this list as small as possible.

ourmandave 17 hours ago

At least the door is cracked open and it's a start.

Of course, Big Pharma will fight to slam it shut again.

refurb 8 hours ago

That's because it's not really a solution.

It's not a negotiation between two parties with equal power, it's just the government saying "either pay this price or you'll be penalized".

The better solution is to allow parallel trade of pharmaceutical across borders.

It will force countries paying far less to pay more and conversely the US paying less.

  • autoexec 5 hours ago

    > The better solution is to allow parallel trade of pharmaceutical across borders.

    No, no it's only a global economy when companies want to manufacture products using slaves in third world countries or they want to outsource programmers and call center employees, but not when consumers want to buy medications or DVDs at the prices they sell for in those same countries or even just want to get higher quality products they refuse to sell you here (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hershey-sues-shops-importing-br...)

  • AuryGlenz 7 hours ago

    Or simply set our prices to the average or median of something like 5 hand-picked other countries - and make that not only for Medicare/caid but also for everyone else. It's ridiculous that hasn't been done yet.

    • refurb 7 hours ago

      That doesn’t work because other countries already do that - set price reference to a basket.

      You end up with a circular reference that spirals prices down.

      At some point that price is lower than the net positive profit point.