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

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (4396)	2/9/2008 11:18:45 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I never said they where driven by American revenue alone, I said it was a disproportionate amount of the profits and thus incentive. 5% of the people (actually a bit less but 5% will do) in the US, and (according to states someone else used here I didn't confirm it) 49% of the revenue. Of course many people are much poorer, but Europe has more people than the US but is a much smaller source of revenue. It has nothing to do with "poor American drug companies". They do ok (even if not as well as many think when you consider startups and smaller companies that fail). The issue is not "Oh the drug companies are suffering", or "How can we help them?". The issue is that they, like most people or organizations, respond to incentives. Reduce the profitability of drugs by a great amount, by political pressure, price controls, monopsony buyers, etc. and you get less new drug development. I really do think that many believe that drugs are mostly developed in the US. Perhaps many people believe that, but no one here is arguing that, so its irrelevant to this conversation. There are lots of false beliefs in the world, but most of them have nothing to do with the conversation here.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (4396)	2/10/2008 8:37:00 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

I really do think that many believe that drugs are mostly developed in the US. That may be so but it's neither here nor there. At issue is where the profits are made.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (4396)	2/11/2008 3:03:14 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

"I really do think that many believe that drugs are mostly developed in the US." I certainly don't. Actually if you look at how short that list is it is truly amazingly short. I have invested profitably in several companies that are not on that list, the company that bought them is. It remains my opinion that the US accounts for a disproportionate share of the profits of pharmaceutical companies that do release valuable new drugs. If the US is the most profitable market then essentially American consumers are funding the research for the whole world. Every consumer outside of the US that benefits from new drugs is essentially a free rider on American consumer purchases. To the extent that this is true, do you believe it is a) fair; b) sustainable?