[refurb]

To the contrary, far more people get access to the drug in question.

There are plenty of drugs you can get in the US that single payers systems simply won't cover. The Cancer Fund in the UK is a great example. NHS said "nope too expensive" to several drugs so unless the Cancer Fund pays for it, you're SOL. That's how single payer systems save money.

That's why pointing to the superior overall life-expectancy in other countries is part of the argument.

Life expectancy is a very blunt tool when you're looking at level of healthcare. There is too much intra-country variability.

[alexqgb]

Part of the reason those drugs exist in the first place is that they've been engineered to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from our nightmare of a system. Yes, you may blow through your lifetime cap on one ailment, but the incentives are in place for pharma makers to see that as much of your cap ends up in their pockets, rather than the competitions. Treatments for Hepatitis-C are one of the more notorious examples of drugs being developed to maximally exploit our system.

The point of controlling costs is to provide incentives for developing drugs that not only work, but that do so at non-ruinous prices.

[refurb]

I guess we'll agree to disagree then. I would argue paying tens of thousands of dollars for a cure is a pretty good deal considering the alternatives.

And also, the cost of those HCV therapies is actually cheaper in the US than in the EU.[1]

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2015/12/04/for-he...