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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robohogs who wrote (1848)	8/13/2007 1:00:21 PM
From: Robohogs	Respond to of 42652

FDA doc on generic savings vs. branded fda.gov Study on Canadian generic pricing vs. US generic pricing pdci.on.ca In this second report, note that Canadian generic penetration is also lower (as would be expected in market where generics cost more while branded costs less - savings from generics much less). If you factor this mix shift into equation, US comes off even better on drug spending vs. ROW. Finally also note that the second report references 40% lower pricing in Canada for branded products. I assumed 50%. Again this makes my point. Jon

To: Robohogs who wrote (1848)	8/13/2007 5:28:21 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

You can mess with these assumptions but not greatly change the result which is that the evil drug guys cause TOTAL US HEALTHCARE SPENDING to be about 2% higher than it would with world pricing. Small price to pay for life extending drugs. Still a large price, start excluding 10% of health care costs here, and 10% there from cost cutting efforts, and it gets really hard to cut costs. But I get your point, its worth paying. Just to make it clear, I oppose price controls on drugs, I also oppose having the government act as a monopsony buyer. I only mentioned drug costs as something that any possible greater efficacy in processing insurance claims would have minimal impact on. A "single payer" system might drive down drug costs by acting as a monopsony buyer or imposing price controls, but that would also drive down incentives, and ability to research new drugs.