DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Why Do You Really Pay More For Prescription Drugs Than The Rest Of The Planet?

They tell you it's because they need funding for R&D even though your tax dollars already help fund their R&D. So let's look at the bottom line on all of this and try to understand why many of us want our government to negotiate prescription drug prices like almost all of the rest of the globe does.

I am all for price caps and regulations. They should do it the same way that Canada does. Meds cant cost more than the average price the rest of the world pays.

America is big pharma's cash cow.

I see the same with defense. We pour money into R&D for them to develop something to help our warfighters and then they claim it proprietary and sell it back at huge margins with us sole-source.

Makes me bat poop crazy.

I thought I knew "the game" until I watched this documentary. Eye-opening is a severe understatement. One of the better documentaries I've seen in a while. It does a great job of covering all the ground necessary to understand all facets of the scam. Bernie says it all in the last fifteen seconds of the trailer.

Our politicians are shills for this nonsense. Let's burn it down and start all over.





Pretty sure this is an Amazon doc; but it's also available, full length, on Youtube.

On a similar note, this two part documentary was just released on HBO regarding Purdue Pharma and pain clinics. Oxycontin and other opiods were an absolute cash cow and a number of politicians looked the other way as more and more people became addicted and were dying. They feared losing Big Pharma donations (obviously).

One patient was being prescribed 22-25 160mg tablets of Oxycontin twice per day.

The US Attorneys Office out of VA had the case tied in a bow for the DOJ to put many of the executives in jail. It turns out Rudy Giuliani helped bury the case with his ties to a member in the DOJ and only slap Purdue with a fine of $600M after they had made nearly $20B on the drug.

Great documentary for anyone interested. This makes the cartel look like a mom and pop shop operation.

Some good...


About the bill:
https://dean.house.gov/press-releases?id=E582BA07-2E33-4069-A7F2-C28DA9556008

Another reason is we buy more than any other place on the planet.

If we did a better job of promoting physical fitness, demand for many common drugs would go down. Demand drives prices.

I don't have any facts or figures in front of me. Just my eye test. My wife and I spent yesterday in Pigeon Forge, TN and will spend a few hours a little later this morning in Gatlinburg before the 2 hour drive home. We take the scenic route. There are a lot of overweight, sickly looking people out there.

Watching what we eat and walking 25 miles a week would go a long way towards reducing the drugs we need to take.

I really can't see how that factors into the price to a meaningful degree.

I mean, I agree that we need to be more physically fit and healthy as a country, but the fact that we have television advertisements for narcotics that need a prescription, pharmaceutical companies can wine and dine doctors, and people like Martin Shkreli that get promoted to CEO of a pharmaceutical company shows you exactly what is going on.

The dynamic is that there are things like allergies, depression, and a host of other ailments going on, many of which are not tied to physical fitness. The facts are that these companies pour tons of money into lobbying and only do so to see a return on that investment. They realize that there is a critical need for their products and they leverage that need with absolutely egregious margins.

I know that you yourself are a big opponent of socialism and Marxism. One of Karl Marx's theories was that capitalism was a progressive step toward Marxism because of internal contradictions, class marginalization, and greed. The phrase "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered" comes to mind. If pharmaceuticals keep implementing such insane leverage and profit margin under a "sole source" justification when you're talking about narcotics necessary for human health, at some point the Government will be called upon to step and in and control drug prices. To avoid that, you would hope that the pharmaceuticals would get their crap together to view the long term consequences, but that never seems to happen with the mega corps.

We should ban prescription drug public advertisements like we did cigarette ads.

I think it's ridiculous that people are going to their doctors and say "I saw this on TV, I want it, it will help me." and they probably get it, because many doctors are probably growing tired of fighting with know-it-all patients, the Web-MD hypochondriacs, add in the payback, rebates and whatever Doctors may get from prescribing certain things, and it's no wonder we have a drug problem in this country.

Everyone wants to take a pill to solve all their ills, and while that may be a short term solution, the damage that long term medication does to your body may not be worth it if healthier habits would have accomplished the same results.

Yes, I never knew that buying more of something means you pay more per unit for it. Usually, if anything, you get a discount on bulk purchases, not pay more.

We should absolutely ban advertisements and restrict current marketing tactics for medications. It's getting to the point where people can't differentiate between everyday aches/pains and minor illnesses with more serious symptoms after being bombarded with these ads.

But the US isn't buying meds in bulk. Hospitals and pharmacys are buying it individually. And yes, we have great demand for a lot of these drugs because as a culture we are way over medicated.

If you give most of America the choice between taking a pill to fix the symptoms of something or cutting back on the drinking and red meat and losing 40 pounds to actually fix the problem.. most Americans want the pill.

It’s one of the things you notice when you travel internationally. Other countries don’t have pharma adds on TV. It’s so nice not being bombarded with “ask your doctor if Zylopia is right for you” constantly.
Shouldn’t our doctors be prescribing appropriate medications without us having to ask them if we should be on certain medications?

One of the other things you notice in most parts of the world is far fewer morbidly obese people..

Meanwhile we have a cultural movement going on to normalize being grossly overweight and being critical of anybody who points out how unhealthy that is because "you do you" and "you shouldn't judge"...

I mean, I can get the supply and demand economics if that's the case, like we see with lumber. But what we don't see with lumber is 2x4s costing $500 a piece. Add in the fact that people (besides Jim Duggan) don't necessarily need a 2x4 to remain healthy or stay alive.

How dare you threaten me!?

When it comes to health in general, there are tradeoffs. When I lived in Europe, I was in great shape because I walked everywhere and went to dance clubs. I probably burned 5-6K calories per day. The only time I was sitting was when I was eating or in class or on the metro.

On the other hand, it's amazing that I didn't get emphysema from the second-hand smoking.

I think you have identified the problem.

You are too young yet...wait about 15 years.

The person buying the product isn't buying in bulk. They are buying a 30, 60, or 90 day supply.

Ha, that could be!

For the record, that was a joke. I certainly don't hope so.

I think the mix up here is that I thought you were speaking about as a country and not as an individual. But I agree with you. Now if our government negotiated our drug prices as a country, buying in bulk like the rest of the free world did, our drug prices would more closely resemble countries like Canada.

Oh, I know.

The people, in the USA are mostly forgotten or overlooked by the big interests.
The Big interests include, big everything, business, pharmaceutical and health care, military, education, and foreign capital, and the media and entertainment industry which is used to distract the regular people.

Now, since, the ones who make laws, are just members of all these other interests, and rotate positons from ceo to director of whatever, to government position, and are working in the best interest of all of these other interests,

What we really have is little/ to no interests of regular people being represented.
But you still get to vote.

Now, they can count it any way they want, and flood millions of fake ballots, to engineer the results to whatever mold they choose.

I really only wanted to make the point that, regular americans are paying too much for the current system of education, at all levels.

With the exception of, ... A physical School bus, and, ... a regular cafeteria line,
that everything else, in the systems of education is about,
13 times as expensive as it needs to be.

Show. Me. Proof.

Or knock it off.

There is no proof because it did not happen.

All they have is crazy accusations with zero substance.

I mean the lunatic fringe on the Left got laughed at for their reaction to Trump winning the 2016 election - and tears and disbelief because Hilary actually got more votes than Trump, so as much as I thought their reaction was a little "crazy", at least they had something that they could look to for the basis of their craziness.

This "Stolen Election" lie is for the truly stupid or the truly wicked and deceitful. It's either grasping and believing something that has been shown and proven over and over and over to be a lie without foundation..... or it's peddling a Trump lie that undermines the fabric of American Democracy. There is no third option.

I do think there's a third option. People often times tend to believe what they want to hear. It aligns with their "feelings and beliefs" so it must be true. I can see how in your mind you may consider that to be a part of " the truly stupid ", but I think it runs a little deeper than that.

I guess a 4th option is it is possible to cover it up.

They are certainly trying to cover up the truth. I'll give you that one.

Nope.

Any idea of the depth and number of people who would all need to be in on it - multiple states, many led by Republicans. Courts, Polling stations, counters, checkers ... call it Occams Razor, call it common sense, call it reality.

We even had Trump saying the same thing after 2016 election - set up his hand picked committee and found NOTHING.

Yeah, in 2016, I was going to be disappointed either way. I do remember listening to reports about celebrities and public figures calling on the electors to go against the public votes and cast their votes for Hillary. I thought that was just asinine, one-off, fringe behavior.

Now, not so much.

Northern European countries have legally mandated 6 weeks of paid vacation for workers, and mandated percentages of corporate boards memebers, being actual workers for that corporation.

Now, that kind of real effective change won't even be discussed in the USA as long as the mega, cooperative interests, of big businesss controlling the government, and government controlling the media broadcasts,
and we let them continue to push this
hate narrative
that they broadcast 12 hours a day.

I'm actually surprised to see you assert that.

I felt the same way. Though TL will likely come back with something like… Trump was going to make all this happen until the commie Dems…. blah blah blah.
But yes. It’s shocking for TL to look towards progressive European standards as something we should strive for in this country.

Those are socialist words.

crazy talk.

j/c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country

Not many entrees here with a "0" listed. I count 5.

Nauru, Tonga, Micronesia, Kiribati ... and of course, the USA.

Most industrialized first world countries - 20+ seems to be about the norm.