Comment by MrDresden
1 month ago
Many European countries have a single payer system when it comes to the medical system. That gives them a big leverage in negotiations for drug pricing.
1 month ago
Many European countries have a single payer system when it comes to the medical system. That gives them a big leverage in negotiations for drug pricing.
When European customers pay American firms, it's "protection money".
When American customers pay European firms, it's just capitalism, sorry bro.
You’re twisting words at this point. Visa and Mastercard are a duopoly and neither of them are afraid to use their power to cut off money flows towards entities they disapprove of. It’s an intrinsic risk and a big issue for sovereignty. The situation is very different for pharmaceuticals, a lot of which are American. The short story is, the American healthcare system is broken and very expensive for the results it provides. The solution is to reform your health system. Moaning won’t solve anything because even if you replaced all those evil European companies with American alternatives, it won’t bring prices down because the system still encourages price gouging.
You’d have a point if you had examples of European pharma companies cutting off supply to American entities for political reasons. You don’t, so you don’t have a point.
I was responding to this comment about how Visa/Mastercard fees are supposedly "protection money": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46736657
If US firm profits in Europe are "protection money" then EU firm profits in the US should also be added to the ledger.
For pharma there are, most of the time, alternatives. There is no alternative to Visa/Mastercard in Europe. It's an American duopoly.
No, Europe had Europay, which their regulators allowed to be subsumed into Mastercard.
Hell, the EMV standard — used in all cards worldwide — means "Europay, Mastercard, Visa".
Look after your toys better.
1 reply →
That comparison makes no sense at all. What protection money are you taking about?
It's a claim from the comment I originally replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46736657