Half of all Health Care dollars are wasted?

[Greg]

That last one, its time has come.

Blegs and GoFundMe are now becoming mainstream. And Americans are very (well except for the liberals) very charitable people.

[Weetabix]

- reel in the FDA's regulated monopolies,

I'm not sure how we'd do that. Drugs and medicines are expensive to develop and pharmaceutical companies need a way to pay for the failures of their drugs. That also infringes on the US Constitution's authority of Congress to grant patents. We definitely need to figure out a way of offsetting the costs of medical treatments and medical devices, though.

I was thinking of the case of the woman stung by a scorpion in AZ or NM where her anti-venom cost $10,000, but if she'd been stung right across the border, the same medicine would have cost $400. But I don't know if the medicine had a patent that the pharm companies in Mexico were violating.

I understand the need for patents, but as I understand it, there are a lot of drugs that work that you just can't get here for a reasonable price. My understanding was that that was due to the FDA's working with the big pharm companies' desires to keep the less expensive stuff out. It's not like we've ever seen the federal government subsidize a pet industry, right?

[Vonz90]

- reel in the FDA's regulated monopolies,

I'm not sure how we'd do that. Drugs and medicines are expensive to develop and pharmaceutical companies need a way to pay for the failures of their drugs. That also infringes on the US Constitution's authority of Congress to grant patents. We definitely need to figure out a way of offsetting the costs of medical treatments and medical devices, though.

I was thinking of the case of the woman stung by a scorpion in AZ or NM where her anti-venom cost $10,000, but if she'd been stung right across the border, the same medicine would have cost $400. But I don't know if the medicine had a patent that the pharm companies in Mexico were violating.

I understand the need for patents, but as I understand it, there are a lot of drugs that work that you just can't get here for a reasonable price. My understanding was that that was due to the FDA's working with the big pharm companies' desires to keep the less expensive stuff out. It's not like we've ever seen the federal government subsidize a pet industry, right?

There are a lot of countries that have price controls on drugs, which is good in the short term but basically means absolutely no inovation since you could never recoup the research and development costs.

On the flip side there are a lot of stupid things we do with our approval process that drives the cost through the roof. Add in featherbeding in various forms and that drives it higher for some products - it is just bad going either way.

[Jered]

I was thinking of the case of the woman stung by a scorpion in AZ or NM where her anti-venom cost $10,000, but if she'd been stung right across the border, the same medicine would have cost $400. But I don't know if the medicine had a patent that the pharm companies in Mexico were violating.

That's this story.

An Arizona woman says she's still reeling from a scorpion sting she suffered last year after she was billed $83,046 for an anti-venom drug that costs just $100 per dose in Mexico.

Anascorp, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, is sold by distributors to Arizona hospitals for about $3,780 per dose, the Arizona Republic reported.

This is a 2012 story. That means the drug was approved in 2011, so, it was probably still under a patent. I'm not sure if Mexico has price controls or not. So, it could mean that the drug available in Mexico was a knockoff, it was stolen, or Mexico has price controls. It's probably something fairly low risk to steal...

I understand the need for patents, but as I understand it, there are a lot of drugs that work that you just can't get here for a reasonable price. My understanding was that that was due to the FDA's working with the big pharm companies' desires to keep the less expensive stuff out. It's not like we've ever seen the federal government subsidize a pet industry, right?

It might also be due to how the US market works because we have a lot of buyers which gives the drug companies more power.

If hospitals and pharmacies wanted to increase their power, they could create an organization that studies the effectiveness of drugs and use that as a negotiating tool in order to lower prices.

There are a lot of countries that have price controls on drugs, which is good in the short term but basically means absolutely no inovation since you could never recoup the research and development costs.

Hmm.

*thinks for a bit*

That might actually be a legitimate area for US government involvement. There actually is a US Court of International Trade. Why not make it an unfair trade practice for a country to require a US based company to charge a particular price for a product? If a country is found to engage in an unfair trade practice, we could sanction that country, and bar that country's goods from the US market and disallow travel of that country's nationals to the US. The US is the world's largest market. In any trade deal, we have the leverage because we have the gold, and, "He who has the gold makes the rules."

On the flip side there are a lot of stupid things we do with our approval process that drives the cost through the roof. Add in featherbeding in various forms and that drives it higher for some products - it is just bad going either way.

Yep. The institutional culture of the FDA is inclined toward the "don't approve drugs" side of the house.