[kingkawn]

This quote was in reference to trying to grow the Chinese economy after Mao.

Given how many people go bankrupt for drugs, and how much high drug prices distort the economics of healthcare overall, id argue our current setup is not catching mice.

A good alternative would be Public investment in healthcare to add fluidity to the labor market, and to prevent a single sectors profiteering from dragging down overall economic growth.

[refurb]

Drug costs are ~10% of all healthcare spending in the US. Even if the gov't created all the drugs and made them "free", we'd still be spending double the next closest developed country.

Drug spending might be very visible to the public, but it's not a major contributor to healthcare costs.

[kingkawn]

Last I saw healthcare accounts for just under 20% of the US GDP.

So then we’re talking about a market that’s just under 2% of the GDP if your 10% number holds.

At these scales nothing is trivial.

[vonmoltke]

It's trivial with respect to moving the needle on the overall problem, particularly since that number needs to be broken down by how much is spent on really expensive drugs versus how much is spent on affordable, generic maintenance medications.