“Last week, we learned that Merck is planning to charge Americans 40 times its cost for a Covid drug whose development was subsidized by the American government. The situation spotlights two sets of facts that have also gone largely unmentioned in the legislative debate over whether to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices.”
“Fact one: Americans are facing not merely expensive drugs, but prices that are examples of outright profiteering.”
“Fact two: in many cases, the medicines we are being gouged on are those that we the public already paid for.”
Medicynical note: It’s safe to say that we, in the U.S., pay more for medications than any other country in the world. We consider newly developed medications akin to new inventions and offer generation long monopoly like patents, having ceded our financial interests to the companies in the 80’s and 90’s.
Drug companies are not part of the health care community. In fact they care more about revenue and the exhorbitant pay of their executives and the price of their stock (stockholders wealth) than the health and well being of their customers.
They benefit from a system fixed in their favor. They do this in part by financially supporting numerous congress people to forestall congressional oversight and then charge U.S. customers whatever they wish–no discounts to offset previous taxpayer support and no negotiation with their largest customer (Medicare) to assure reasonable pricing and profits on U.S. sales.
In fact, we pay more than any other locale in the world because we let them charge us more. Do we have any right to complain?
Medicynic 