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by nonethewiser 7 days ago
The cost of medicine is a factor in the cost of healthcare. R&D has to be funded somehow. I agree it’s not the only factor.

Does his country’s pharmaceutical industry push the frontier of medicine forward?

1 comments

Yes. Institut Pasteur discovered a lot of the molecules currently used in general medecine, created more new vaccines than any other institute and currently is at the very edge of gene therapy.

Not that is has anything to do with efficiency. If you give 100 to my public healthcare, 94 of that will be used to reimburse health expenses, if you give 100 to US private healthcare, only 86 will be used to reimburse health expenses. That has nothing to do with initial costs.

How can you say Institut Pasteur single handedly pushes the industry forward? It has 0 novel approvals per year and spends about $0.4B/yr in R&D. Compared to about 35 novel approvals and $120B per year from the US pharmaceutical industry.