I've been reading NYT for a long while now, and I've been noticing more and more of these "medicines are more expensive here" trope.
There's half an answer isn't there? The US is subsidizing the development of these new drugs to the world, at the cost of it s citizens, as these companies operate all over the world and not just in US. The _relatively_ richer people in Cali can afford to pay $x more than the people in Bali.
Sure, the exploiting the people under the marketing guise of "patented" paracetamol varieties is _very_ unethical, and just slimy. That we can all agree on.
But every time such an article is posted, the only question in my mind is, "isn't the problem half explained?".
What's the alternative, not innovate and let everyone die? As opposed to innovate, and some people who live better than the others pay a bit (or in this case, ~2.49x) more ?
Is there an alternative where everyone pays equally ? Sure, you can lower the cost for an American and subsidize it (which comes from their tax again, so they're being more/less charged the same amount).
or you can increase the price for the rest of the world until the death toll vs affordability ratio looks good for the company that decides this is a good idea.
The problem is half explained.
The rest of the problem's explanation must lie here.
--- From the article:
Part of insulin’s price rise in the United States is because of the middlemen who buy the drugs on behalf of insurers and hospitals and negotiate discounts off the list price for their clients. So Lilly often doesn’t make the full $275 a vial (though, since rebates are secret, we don’t know how much less).
By selling an authorized generic, rather than merely lowering the brand’s price, Lilly is essentially doing an end-run around those middlemen and giving patients who don’t purchase through an insurer another option.
---
It's also a supply chain problem, not the manufacturing supply chain, but the business to customer supply chain.
I guess margins are not that wide enough for middle men to make anything significant in other countries except the states.
My tone in this comment is very inquisitive, not aggressive in any way, I don't mean to come across like that.