I don't think letting uncle Jimmy cook up aids medicine and sell it as such unimpeded is the answer here.
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Big Phoenix
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Abefroman
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Tolan
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I suppose it would depend on the regulation(s). If the govt regulates the profit per sale on life saving medication, the price will be kept fair and affordable.
If the govt had no regulations at all, monopolies would form rather quickly in all markets, leading to price gouging. There's a necessary balance of free market opportunity and regulations for the interest of both the consumer and health of markets as a whole. If a regulation (such as this) allows one company to corner the market and gouge consumers, then the regulations need to be changed.
Big Phoenix
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I didn't say disband everything and let companies run hog wild.
This is a drug that's out of patent. I'm sure pfizer or someone could quickly concoct a pull quite easily. Getting it through all the regulatory hurdles and red tape? Not so fast I bet.
This is a drug that's out of patent. I'm sure pfizer or someone could quickly concoct a pull quite easily. Getting it through all the regulatory hurdles and red tape? Not so fast I bet.
I like your car. You should sell it to me for $5. If you don't, I'll sue you. See how that goes wrong?
Health care is a market like any other. Much like Apple gets to set the price for the latest iPhone, so do pharmaceutical companies with their drugs. If Apple charged $5,000 for an iPhone, people would switch to Android (well, not everyone). That mostly works with drugs, too: it's pretty rare that there's only one drug that can treat a particular disease (often it's just slightly more effective) and after some years, cheaper generics hit the market. Plus, drugs that are priced too highly may simply not be covered by insurers: so there's a clear upper bound of what can be charged.
A disease that affects very few people is inevitably going to be expensive. A drug, once developed, first has to be patented, then it has to go through medical trials. As it goes through trials, the patent protection clock already starts ticking. At the end of the day, that leaves about 10 years before a generic hits the market. On average, it costs $1bn to bring a new drug to market. So if it doesn't generate at least $100m in net revenue per year, they're making a loss despite having a medically successful product. If the condition affects 5,000 people, you have to charge each of them $20k/year just to break even.
There are ways around this, like extending patent protection for treatments for rare conditions. But the point is to show that it's not necessarily unfettered greed that leads to high drug prices.
Also that it makes sense to have agreements with some countries that avoid requiring companies to go through the certification process multiple times. If a drug has been shown to be effective in Germany or the UK, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do the same trials again in Canada and again in the US. The two other regulatory bodies could automatically certify the effectiveness of drugs after reviewing the studies, rather than requiring them to be repeated.
No company is going to go through trials simultaneously, because that's way too costly if it doesn't work. So you first go through one process, hopefully learn that drug X works and you have 10 years of patent protection left.Thenyou start the certification process in other large markets. That can easily cut another 3-5 years out of the time, leaving you with 5-7 years to make money in those markets.
Tolan
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No, it's not. It's the only market in which the consumer's quality and quantity of life is virtually held for ransom by a debilitating condition.
Tolan
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kegkilla
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Big Phoenix
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Insider trading is illegal, as is the purposeful manipulation of a stock in that manner. Also c level officers have to declare their sales and buys of stock will in advance.
Tolan
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And what if the outside friends, otherwise not associated with the trades, of these legally inside people make the trades?
Perhaps we need a regulation making short selling itself illegal.
iannis
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It does make sense, but you start to run into sovereignty issues.
What happens when Canada Corp has a disastrously bad run and ships bad meds across national boundaries? We're not talking anything malicious.
There's a lot of upside to having the sorts of treaty that you're mentioning, it's mostly upside, and I think we should have more open borders in this market. But when you're dealing with tort... and international tort at that... there are some very real potential hazards as well.
If hospitals can charge $30 for one aspirin. I don't see why this guy can't charge whatever he wants for his pills. Its all fucked up either way. US healthcare is all about profits. He's just doing what they all do.
Hachima
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Pharmacies are almost as bad in this mess. They don't advertise prices but medicare.gov has a database that can be used to determine the base price pharmacies are charging for a drug.
Look atLipitor Prices and Lipitor Coupons - GoodRxand the est retail price. Lipitor is being sold from $40 to $240 base price. The prices hardly follow what you would expect in a free market. Most people don't realize the price discrepancy for drugs between pharmacies. 300% in many cases. For young people that get a script maybe once every few years its not a big deal. It really starts to be a problem for people with regular prescriptions though. It may not even phase them when they have their co-pay and don't see the full cost at first until they enter a coverage gap and probably don't question the new price the pharmacy gives them vs shopping around for the best price.
Look atLipitor Prices and Lipitor Coupons - GoodRxand the est retail price. Lipitor is being sold from $40 to $240 base price. The prices hardly follow what you would expect in a free market. Most people don't realize the price discrepancy for drugs between pharmacies. 300% in many cases. For young people that get a script maybe once every few years its not a big deal. It really starts to be a problem for people with regular prescriptions though. It may not even phase them when they have their co-pay and don't see the full cost at first until they enter a coverage gap and probably don't question the new price the pharmacy gives them vs shopping around for the best price.
You could say the same for food or housing: both are pretty important. Enough so for the state to intervene, with the cost particularly salient in housing (*cough* San Francisco, New York) -- i.e. shortages.
There are legitimate reasons for short selling.
1) They're integral to hedging risks for large financial services institutions. Some places banned short-selling during the financial crisis and banks there would simply freeze up completely. The lack of short-selling prevented them from even pricing some of their products, meant they suddenly were exposed to much larger risk of losses, etc. Very, very bad idea.
2) The point of the stock market is to reflect the best belief on prices. That means some people have to be able to say "hey, this is undervalued -- I want to buy!" and some people will have to be able to go the other way. Otherwise, you may well see more bubbles: less money than can counter a significant overvaluation of a company.
If the guy did anything of the sort that was claimed, or any of his friends did, the SEC will be all over their asses. They're pretty good at their job and some dude tweeting about how he's going to crash a stock will make their work pretty easy.
Shonuff
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Shorts are incredibly healthy for markets. First, no sane organization that wants to stay in business long participates in wide spread naked short selling. Second, shorts provide a huge amount of liquidity on both the up swings and the down swings. Third, shorts actually start many rallies they cover and can extend rallies when they are wrong and you get a squeeze.
Regardless of all that, there are tons of ways to make money in down or up markets. Shorting is one of the more risky and gets portrayed a bunch but much more common are covered options. Especially now as the market trades and you can sell options to play the ups and down on securities you own locking in profits of the stock and also collecting the premiums on the contracts you sell as the security goes up or down depending on what your strategy is. Most options end out of the money, its actually a really solid way to augment returns but does take some know how to implement properly.
Regardless of all that, there are tons of ways to make money in down or up markets. Shorting is one of the more risky and gets portrayed a bunch but much more common are covered options. Especially now as the market trades and you can sell options to play the ups and down on securities you own locking in profits of the stock and also collecting the premiums on the contracts you sell as the security goes up or down depending on what your strategy is. Most options end out of the money, its actually a really solid way to augment returns but does take some know how to implement properly.
Royal
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I would say the difference between health care and other types of free market goods and services is that consumers do not behave the way they are intended to for a marketplace to function as it should. People simply don't purchase their health care in the same manner as they do a car, a home, or food. The idea of the informed consumer comparing competing goods and services then making their purchasing decision based on their best option for the lowest price just doesn't translate to health care.