Comment by BiteCode_dev
6 hours ago
This is not like IT where the Americans are completely dominant and clearly superior.
The European pharma companies are doing more than fine, despite their main market being heavily regulated and price-controlled.
The less charitable explanation is that US companies want to charge outrageous prices, and the American system let them to, so they do it.
That's what the USA are: a machine to prioritize profits over people. Sometimes it turns out fine, like for the startup scene. Sometimes it's terrible, like when lives at stake.
Other explanations sound like heavy copium to me.
Many of those European pharma companies do most of their work and make most of their money in the US.
While it's true that the exposure of top European firms can be often 50%+ of total revenue from U.S, that:
- Doesn't make them non viable without the American market, just less rich.
- Doesn't reflect the 5 to 10 times higher price Americans pay for the same drugs.
You can have a healthy industries with plenty of billions to be around and have decently priced drugs.
What you get in the US is uber profitable industries and people scrapping around.
Those European companies make most their profit in the US. They would be much smaller without access to the US market.
Maybe drugs, or these drugs, aren't the most efficient solutions. Shouldn't we direct resources toward more efficient ones?
There are a lot of bad health outcomes built into our society, yes, but by the time people are confronted with the health impacts of cars, agriculture subsidies, for-profit healthcare, etc. it is likely that drugs will be necessary to treat the very real, immediate problems which any given patient has. Reversing the subsidies for things like car-dependency would positively benefit millions of people but it’s a generational change, not something most individuals can do.
>Maybe drugs, or these drugs, aren't the most efficient solutions. Shouldn't we direct resources toward more efficient ones?
Turns out all the low hanging fruit have already been picked, so the only "more efficient ones" left are stuff like gene therapy, which are absurdly expensive, but still theoretically cheaper than a lifetime of care. Unsurprisingly the high sticker price draws much backlash from the public and politicians.
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