Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by erosenbe0 1630 days ago
Umm, the variance in prices in only very slightly due to quality, like often 5% or 1% or less than 1% of the variance. Please show data accounting for why anti-parasitics that costs 5 cents per dose for a horse or 5 cents per dose in India with 20 high quality generic versions are $50 in the US. Hint. BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET ON HIGH-QUALITY AND SAFE DRUGS. WE HAVE A PAY TO EXTRACT RENT SYSTEM.
1 comments

I wish you wouldn't post things like this because, although what you are saying is factually correct, you are saying it in a patronizing and shouting way, which will lead people to associate these insights with acting like an asshole. That makes it harder for them to assimilate them, even when I'm the one explaining them and even if I'm managing not to act like an asshole.
I'm sorry but I used to work in healthcare and we see people suffer because they can't afford the $10 monthly copay on drugs that should cost no more than $10 or $20 for a year supply, like a giant bottle of generic aspirin. The fact that they suffer due to pure exploitation is disturbing.
I understand, and I appreciate your compassion.
Also, the person you were shouting at and saying "Hint" to probably knows about 100 times more than you do about the economics of drug companies.
Sure, if we are talking about on-patent drugs I don't know that much. But if we are talking about off-patent generics there isn't a lot to know. We in the United States have a variety of financial, temporal, regulatory, and competitive barriers that bloat prices, sometimes by a factor of 100, over consumer market price in somewhere like India, or even Mexico.