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

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (4446)	2/13/2008 12:44:29 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Where to start. So much disinformation, so little time. If foreign pharmaceutical company profits are so high in their own countries, why do they seek to sell in the US? The answer is obvious, for the profits. Contemplate this, what would happen if the US passed a law requiring all foreign domiciled pharmaceutical companies to sell at the lowest price sold in any industrialized nation? Every foreign beneficiary of US funded research would sue in the World Trade Organization. The rulings would be swift and the US would be prohibited from enforcing the law. If the ruling was not swift every one of them would form a US subsidiary that nominally complied with the restrictions in the law to allow them to continue to sell them profitably in the US. If it were not struck down and the foreign subsidiaries were not allowed to sidestep the law the pharmaceutical industry would likely shed about 2/3 of its market value overnight. What would that do to your mutual funds? "All of that money was subsidized by taxpayers through deductions and tax credits." What kind of idiot would write that? So you subsidize your local grocer's freezer through deductions? Your employer receives subsidies for your desk, chair and computer through depreciation? NO! Depreciation is a way of slowing the deductibility of business expenses. (Follow up, would you buy from a grocer that did not refrigerate?) The issue of tax credits is a different one, and while some costs of research are reimbursed that way it is a question often of which government wants the research and payrolls for it in their jurisdiction. "Competing countries profit from these American ... by ... keeping their own drug prices ..." down It required some editing to restore the meaning that the author was trying to obscure. "4. FDA Commissioner McClellan charges that efforts to negotiate lower prices for patented drugs by other countries (and by major employers, unions and governors in the U.S.) are "no different than violating the patent directly" to make cheap copies (McClellan 2003). ..." 5. ...other wealthy countries driving down their prices to marginal costs, but the widening gap between prices for patented drugs in the U.S. and other countries is due to drug companies raising U.S. prices... 25. Price competition has been the greatest spur to innovation for over 200 years. Price protections reward derivative and me-too innovation as well as excessive costs and a focus on blockbuster marketing. If we want lower prices and more breakthrough innovations, we need to change the incentives to reward those goals (Baker and Chatani 2002). As usual, statists want to solve problems caused by government regulation with more government regulation. In business when people fail they are relieved of duty, in sports when players fail they are taken off the field but in government people want to use failure as an excuse to screw things up further.