Koch Brothers own study says that Universal Healthcare is cheaper than current US system

[fatslob-:O]

Hiku said:

Ideology (that humans living in a society have a right to live...) does not help my argument, but your ideology of sacrificing 45 000+ people a year who didn't need to die, because that may approve a hypothetical useful drug sooner, helps your argument?

You're favoring sacrificing 45 000+ people in a real scenario, in favor of a very hypothetical scenario where this speeds up the approving of future drugs that would somehow end up saving more lives than this system unnecessarily killed?

First of all, keep in mind that most of these newly discovered drugs are not designed to save lives. Usually they are improvements of more common non life threatening drug treatments. In more rare cases they are improvements to drugs designed to save lives. And in even rarer cases, it's a new drug designed to treat a previously un-treatable condition. And in even rarer cases, those conditions are life threatening. Etc.

Just keep that in mind as we go on when you chose your priorities that lead to 45 000+ people a year actually dying.
The most common conditions that lead to premature death today globally will likely remain at the top of the charts for many decades to come. If not centuries.

Now there are three major key factors that the article you linked to doesn't bring up.

1.) The study they cited about the average cost of new drug approvals was heavily criticized by a nummber of industry peers, including Doctors Without Borders, which said it was "unreliable because the industry's research and development spending is not made public". (This is a very important fact that I'll get back to below.) Another publication said it "contains a lot of assumptions that tend to favor the pharmaceutical industry."
Coincidentally (?) the source of that 2014 study in your article can no longer be found: https://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014_cost_study
At least every reference link I found lead to that broken link page.
I don't know if they retracted the study due to criticism of lack of evidence, but in either case it leads me into my next point:

2.) At no point in the article you linked does it mention that the primary reason for why US drug prices are so high is because USA, unlike any other modern country on the planet, is unable to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. It briefly mentions higher costs being a factor, alongside the cases where its newer drugs, but makes no effort trying to explain why the drugs cost so much more in the US when in the cases where it's not a newer drug.
You can find the same US manufactured drug in Canada for up to 5 times cheaper. Manufactured by a US company....
It's literally cheaper in some cases to drive to Canada to buy drugs that were exported from USA, rather than buying domestically.

And the most important part...

3.) Even assuming that the numbers in your article are correct, a key factor they did not divulge is that industry's research and development spending is not made public. In other words, there's no proven correlation between the pharmaceutical industry jacking up prices in the US to them investing the gains into more research and development, rather than pocketing the gains and buying their CEO's their 10th yacht.
The only example this article uses to establish such a concept is a study in regards to the Orphan Drug Act. And here, they did not mention that the Orphan Drug Act established tax incentives for rare disease drug development.

The bottom line is, these kind of tax incentives for rare drug development can be given without jacking up drug prices to multiple times that of what they cost in other countries. And we don't know how much of those extra gains the pharmaceutical industry puts back into R&D because R&D spending is not made public.

The reason that this article seems to conveniently not disclose any of this info may very well be that it was funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

But even if that's not the case, and even if jacked up US drug prices meant a substantial increase in R&D, it does not mean we need to sacrifice 45 000+ people a year for something that very well may not save more lives than it took. Especially not when the majority of people, even in the USA where brainwashing about this subject is high ("we will turn into Soviet Russia or Venezuela if we allow this one more socialistic program, on top of roads, bridges, fire department, parks, libraries, elementary school, elected officials", etc) the majority of people want a single payer system according to polls.

@Bold Are you serious ?! First you start off with an appeal to emotion fallacy, second, in no way did I establish an ideology considering how dangerously easy it is to fall into one when this thread is a very good example of just about almost everyone in here is using confirmation bias to enforce "price controls" as the only sole solution but what I stated is nothing more than a part of a possible concession with respect to the american paradigm and third, you just made a straw man by implicating that I somehow "support" sacrificing 45000+ lives ... 

I want to make it undeniably clear to you that I do not explicitly support "sacrificing" lives or even prefer the high pricing of health care! When making a possible devil's advocate, I've come to "accept" these concepts rather than to outright "deny" or much less "support" them when making my arguments ... 

Furthermore, arguing on an ethical basis by stating phrases such as "didn't need to die", "favoring sacrificing 45 000+ people" and "unnecessarily killed" (nobody killed them, that's just hyperbole on your part) is just another method to hide behind cognitive bias which is even more evident when you purposely understate the achievements of American medical science innovation by calling FDA approvals "hypothetical" even though America has kept their leadership for nearly DECADES in that area but it could not be anymore true since last year! Why the hell do you even have the audacity to even remotely disrespect what American medical innovation has achieved every year including likely for another decade or even two to come ?! How would you like if I kept constantly shitting on your institution by undercutting the fact that you guys constantly short change Americans because of the inability of your system to contribute to the fair share of innovation ? (pharmaceutical companies receive 70% of their profit solely from American despite the fact their GDP represents less than half of that figure) Trump is right, maybe they and the rest of the Americans need to start a god damned reevaluation of drug prices abroad and instead focus on protecting their domestic medical innovation more by charging the supposed exorbitant prices for the same patented drugs in European or other commonwealth countries than worrying about technology transfer to China ... (I don't care at this point if Americans are playing into the so called "Russian hands" when there's no credit to be had from it's ungrateful allies whenever it's obviously due) 

FFS, at this point I should start acting more reciprocal towards you because an open dialogue or revisionism in you or the other's cases here isn't getting anywhere when Aeolus and I are being painted as pariah's instead of an alternate valid voice reason. I have especially lost a lot of faith that there is any sincerity to be had from you when going further into discussion ... 

1. The general consensus seems to be is that R&D is pegged at OVER $2.8 billion dollars so why even doubt the industry experts themselves that produces the products ? Even if the figure in question is inflated just where the hell do expect to raise the funds of an upwards of $1+ billion dollars to fund drug development ? What productive solution do you suggest for drug development despite the fact that no big American pharmaceutical has a virtual monopoly on the drug market ? Has domestic American competition somehow failed to curb inefficiencies such as overly generous compensation ? (if it even is a thing when just about everyone of it's top employees and not just the directors or executives are given stock options as well) 

2. So I assume it's also modern to keep freeloading off of American innovation as well like how China keeps constantly forcing technology transfer from foreign firms, am I right ? It's ironic how American allies keep asking America for compassion towards it's people yet those same allies turn an absolute blind eye for compassion to American innovation as well ... ("70% of the profits paid to pharmaceutical companies and we get nearly nothing in return" is what Trump would say) 

It's allies can not get more perversely hypocritical and condescending than they already are, just more disrespect to come until they come to the realization of what is truly lost ... 

3. There's other papers as well that demonstrate my point regardless and here's a neat example too on a smaller scale ...

Price controls are straight up HARMFUL to medical innovation in almost any of the cases and it also hurts drug availability too unless you want your nation to be truly as shameless as those Asian countries skirting the patent laws by creating generics ... (it's mostly thanks to the Americans that your delusional system isn't in total shambles right now with shortages and that your firms get to develop new drugs on American soil too to also be able to reap further benefits as well) 

Just because not all of the cut does not go solely to drug R&D does not mean that these pharmaceutical companies are not producing value and it's laughable that you accuse Americans of "brainwashing" when they have to deal the reality of it's allies freeloading from them year after year ... (an ultimatum should be in order where America demands that the rest of the world pays the SAME PRICE for the drugs it develops and foreign firms shall have the option to re-headquarter/relocate in America or not by staying in a delusional market) 

Have you EVER considered that it's you and the others here that are mistaken ? If "drug access" is so vital then just where hell are the the pharmaceutical state owned enterprises to compete in the market to prove private enterprises wrong about the expenses drug development ? I can already tell you and the other promoters of this system won't answer to that question cause it doesn't exist. I'm waiting for your so called perverted system to "nationalize" a private entity to prove your point and see how that goes ... 

Last edited by fatslob-:O - on 03 August 2018