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

To: Road Walker who wrote (3063)	12/4/2007 5:25:20 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Drugs are not a discretionary product... If the price of food goes up do people stop buying food? No, they don't stop, but they do buy less and they buy from other vendors. US drug companies aren't the only suppliers. We could be taking Fortune brand aspirin and Lotus Flower brand statins. I hear that the Lotus Flower company has a wonderful R&D department. It's located next to the lead processing plant. <g>

To: Road Walker who wrote (3063)	12/4/2007 6:08:25 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

If they can't make obscene money in the US they will have to raise prices elsewhere. That assumes they have control of the prices elsewhere. If the price of food goes up do people stop buying food? If the price from one supplier goes up people go to a different supplier. If an American drug company goes to a national health care system and that system wants to pay X, while the drug company insists on 15X, than either the national health system does without the drug, or the government authorizes local production of the patented drug through compulsory licensing, or even just ignoring the patent, or perhaps the drug company (probably in response to the threat of compulsory licensing or ignoring of the patent), brings its price back down, and effectively submits to the price controls.