Big Pharma, famous for having accountability, oversight and input from patients and their doctors.
They respond to the free market, sweetie. The price is just the result of supply and demand.
Patients: I consent
Doctors: I consent
Government Agency: I consent
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask!
•
Price setting by an unaccountable private entity with every incentive to keep prices high
vs.
Price setting by a slightly less unaccountable public entity with every incentive to keep prices low
Which way, American boomer?
listen jack, the market is the most efficient method of distributing resourceswith every incentive to keep prices low
I don't know about that - regulatory capture is a problem. Public services commissions that are responsible for regulating private energy companies tend to have a strong reputation of rubber stamping rate hikes.
Good point, maybe we should be asking the doctors and patients what the price should be. What's that? They've come to the consensus that all medications should be free? Uhhhh, Never mind. Look over here, we're doing research and need your money otherwise you won't get any new drugs!
ONLY WE CAN DO THATOf course this is complemented by the imperial feudalistic measure that Bismarck introduced in Germany, that if you are sick you are getting paid for the work you do and don't have to work in form of an insurance.
Drugs like Truvada have been used to prevent the transmission of HIV. Without insurance, prescriptions can cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The patents for drugs that prevent HIV transmission are owned by Gilead, and they make the drugs cheaper in other countries (because their representatives negotiated prices unlike the US).
Only a truly depraved person could understand or witness the devastation of the AIDS crisis and still allow such drugs to stay behind a paywall. I know part of the pushback around treating HIV stems from a legacy of hate, but I couldn't imagine being a worker at Gilead or a politician who has the powder to affect drug prices (like by removing patents for critical drugs).
And then these politicians, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and lobbyists do this for other drugs.
Did you know there's a cure for hepatitis C? It's months of treatments and costs thousands of dollars. I worked in a hospital with a patient who took medication for hepatitis C. When we saw the announcement on the news together a few years ago, she looked so happy and excited to finally be cured. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she likely wouldn't be able to afford the cure since it's more profitable to sell a regular treatment for life.
Diabetes and cancer treatments have the same oppressive pricing issues where patients try to space out their medications to afford them. People have died because they couldn't afford rent and medications.
People go on dialysis indefinitely instead of getting a permanent treatment like organ transplant because DeVita and other companies make a profit from making clean blood a subscription service.
And don't even get me started on the handling of COVID at any point. The fact that Bill Fucking Gates had any say in how vaccines were patented or distributed is enough cause for foreign intervention in a just world.
I'm disgusted by the cold cruelty on display when people treat lukewarm concessions, such as price negotiation, like acceptable solutions. I hate that the vague fear of communism is enough to convince reactionaries to fight against the smallest amounts of progress.
Long rant short - death to America, pharmaceutical companies, patents, and the people who own them.
And also, fucking Medicare? I'd love to wait until I'm retirement age so that I can cut coupons to afford the many drugs I'll have to take since I couldn't afford to get preventative treatment in my thirties.
As an aside, one thing that this tweet does allude to is that the CMS has an incredible power to set prices sector wide if allowed to but the government. Since Medicare is the single largest insurance provider in the US, and since every other insurance provider follows the CMS's lead when it comes to what to cover and how much to reimburse hospitals, CMS negotiating a lower price will lead to benefits for everyone who has insurance in the US.
