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

To: Road Walker who wrote (3605)	1/4/2008 2:12:36 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

It there is an end to the US subsidy then they will have to raise prices in the rest of the world In many cases they are simply unable to do this. cut US advertising costs They might actually increase as the companies fight for a bigger share the shrining pie, or try to get people to use more drugs to make up for the reduced profit on each sale. Just as farmers would not stop growing food if we ended farm subsidies. Some farmers would stop growing. In any case the two markets are rather different. Farmers don't have to continually make very large investments to develop new products. Yes selling drugs is there business, but you get less investment in businesses and industries if the expected returns are less. Sure they wouldn't stop developing drugs, but they would put less money in to doing so, both because they have less incentive (lower expected rates of return), and less ability (lower cash flow/revenue/profits to use to fund the research. Money goes where the expected return is. In some cases there might be some inertia, the response may be delayed, but if so you often have a more painful adjustment later.