[Causality1]

However expensive it is, it should cost the same in all markets globally, whether it's being purchased by a patient in cash, by an NGO, by a state Healthcare system, or by an insurance company. I'm tired of paying a five hundred percent markup to subsidize markets thousands of miles away.

[scarejunba]

You're not subsidizing the markets far away. Price discrimination isn't subsidizing. The supplier is just able to extract the maximum price from each market.

[nybble41]

> The supplier is just able to extract the maximum price from each market.

And they are able to do that because laws have been passed in their favor to legally bar other people from simply importing the exact same products from other markets where they are sold at much lower prices.

Price discrimination isn't subsidizing, per se, but the scope for price discrimination is very limited in the absence of government support due to arbitrage. Governments interfering in the market to enable price discrimination is very much a form of subsidy, even if the money isn't passing through the government on its way to the supplier.

[scarejunba]

I think I agree with this entirely.

[refurb]

Really? So a country with a per capita income of $5,000 should pay the same as what a country with a $50,000 per capita income?

That would be a terrible outcome.

[m0zg]

You should extend this line of reasoning to other goods. Pay 10x for your food, too, so someone else could get theirs for less. Pay $50 per gallon of gas, stuff like that.

The op's POV might seem cruel, but only if you're in an ivory tower. There are _plenty_ of people right here in the US who can't afford drugs because we insist that they should be 10x the price in the US than everywhere else.

In fact, I'd say those people comprise a _majority_ of US healthcare consumers, due to just how unequal the incomes are.

There's also another negative side effect: due to what amounts to dumping, other countries essentially don't have any pharma research of their own, likely because it wouldn't be profitable. That includes pretty much all of them other than Switzerland (where both the health insurance and drugs are pretty expensive).

[bildung]

> There are _plenty_ of people right here in the US who can't afford drugs because we insist that they should be 10x the price in the US than everywhere else.

The very article explains this isn't true, as drug price doesn't really correlate with R&D costs.

> There's also another negative side effect: due to what amounts to dumping, other countries essentially don't have any pharma research of their own

That's wrong, too. According to [0], U.S. pharma companies globally spent about 70 billions, of which about 11 billions were spent in Western Europe, so net amount was at most (assuming nothing was spent outside the US and Western Europe) 59 billion dollars.

By comparison, according to [1], R&D spend from national companies from Germany, Switzerland, UK and France were about 20 billion USD.

So the population adjusted R&D spend relation is lower than 1:2 between Western Europe and the US.

[0] = https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.05903...

[1] = https://www.vfa.de/download/the-pharmaceutical-industry-in-g...