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kirlandwater t1_j00k0jd wrote

Reply to comment by jwill602 in [OC] Visualising Pfizer's latest income statement. Pharmaceutical profit margins are notoriously higher than most other industries by giteam

We effectively pay for every other country to have low drug prices. They make up the revenue loss by charging Americans more

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QuizardNr7 t1_j00ormx wrote

Side effect I would say. In a completely free market the price of life saving insulin is just very high. And regulation seems to prevent effective cost competition. Newly developed drugs might see less investment if the US market weren't so juicy, I would give you that.

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kirlandwater t1_j00p1jn wrote

> in a completely free market the price of life saving insulin is just very high

But that’s not entirely true. Yes it’s needed to live, but so is water. And water isn’t exorbitantly expensive. Insulin is VERY cheap to make and because lawmakers aren’t willing to combat evergreen-ing patents, competition simply all but isn’t allowed. If they’d allow generics to come to market, the price would plummet.

In a completely free market we’d have a race to the bottom.

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