Comment by throwaway2016a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway2016a | Hacker News Reader

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No mention that the average wage in Tanzania is $45 to $50 a month? As a proportion to wage it is actually more comparable than at first glance.

As a solution though, I think we need reciprocity between drug regulatory agencies and open up drug sales between countries that have reciprocity. For example, if a drug is approved for sale in Canada it should be purchasable by people in the US and visa versa. It would allow competition between regulatory agencies (which should in theory make them more efficient because they have to compete) and lower the cost of bringing a drug to market because you no longer need to get approval in as many countries. Which in theory should lower consumer costs.

Combine that with transparent pricing so that everyone knows what the costs are before they need to make a purchasing decision and we might be part way to a solution.

The median monthly household income in the U.S. is $4710.

The difference is two orders of magnitude.

Correct, if you were to go purely by the wages, the pill should cost $4 in the US not $400. It is still high, I was just pointing out that there are market differences. And to expand on that, the illness the drug in question is more common in Tanzania (per the article) so I can only presume the drug company can sell an order of magnitude more and might actually be making almost as much profit in aggregate on that $0.04 as they do the $400 here.

The article explains why it's so expensive:

> Why are prices so different in the U.S.?

> "In other countries, there are price control methods. The government steps in to ensure drug prices do not increase by a certain amount," Alpern says. "There are no price control mechanisms in the U.S."

> Between 2011 and 2016, mebendazole's price jumped more than 8,000 percent, from $4.50 to $369.

So it was indeed $4.5 in the U.S. - until the company decided to get greedy.

I'm not sure your conclusion follows from the article. The lack of controls may contribute but the reasoning may have not been greed. There are many market factors in play. It may very well be greed but I don't see much evidence in this article either way.

In other words, the article explains why the price growth was not capped. It does not explain why it grew in the first place.

In general I wish the drug company had taken time to contribute to this article and show their side of the story.

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