[jedberg]

I never actually said I had a problem with this drug or the price. (I do, but I never said that)

Imagine we live in a world where all drug research must be given away freely. Chances are private companies would no longer do the research, since any of their competitors could pick up the research and make it. In which case almost all funding for drug research would revert to universities and drug companies would simply be manufacturers, and would have to compete on manufacturing efficiency.

Now, we know that the 8 billion came from somewhere in our economy, so at this point it would be an academic exercise to figure out how to extract that from the economy and transfer it to universities to do the research.

What I'm saying is that we need to remove the profit motive in health care, because there is no elasticity in the market. People will pay infinity to keep living. There is no price point where someone says, "that's too much" when it comes to health care, so the market doesn't operate like any other.