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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Canadians are in a kerfuffle over the Trump administration's preliminary plan to allow Americans to import lower-cost prescription medications from Canada.
The plan was announced July 31 and is part of the administration's long-sought effort to drag down the US's skyrocketing drug prices. But it's a long way from being a reality. Even if the plan does pan out, it will likely be years before regulators review, approve, and scale up efforts to import drugs.
Still, Canadians are infuriated by the idea and already brainstorming ways to toss it down the garburator, according to a report by health-news outlet STAT. Many fear that American importation would exacerbate current drug shortages in Canada.
"You are coming as Americans to poach our drug supply, and I don't have any polite words for that," Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa told STAT. Prof. Attaran went on to refer to the plan as "deplorable" and "atrociously unethical." "Our drugs are not for you, period."
[...] On Monday, August 12, Canada's Minister of Health Ginette Petitpas Taylor was set to meet with pharmacists, patients, and industry officials to discuss a response to the US plan, according to STAT. Petitpas Taylor has pledged to "ensure there are no adverse effects to the supply or cost of prescription drugs in Canada."
In order to protect Canadians, some advocates and policy experts suggested that Canada could begin controlling the export of pharmaceuticals, pass new laws simply banning exporting drugs meant for Canadians, or impose new tariffs.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:22PM (5 children)
Um, no. In a free market there's lots of competition, which drives the market price down to the cost of production (including amortized capital costs and interest).
Far from being the point of a free market, high profits are a sure sign that you don't actually have one. If you did, someone else would have swooped in and started selling the same goods with half the profit margin to make a killing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 15 2019, @06:19PM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 16 2019, @02:20AM (3 children)
Who said anything about asymmetry?
In a well functioning free market there's many producers and many consumers. And if there's many producers then, irrespective of how many consumers there are, there's no way to charge substantially more than cost for your commodity goods - all the (rational) consumers will buy from another producer selling at a lower price while still making a profit.
Of course, if the profit margins aren't large enough to be appealing then the producers will shift production to some more profitable product, but the net result is that all products on the market will see roughly the same profit margins.
The only ways to sell at a price substantially more than cost is to:
1) promote irrational consumer behavior (a.k.a. marketing),
2) collude with all/most of the other producers to artificially raise prices, or
3) establish a monopoly so that you don't have to collude with anyone else.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 16 2019, @07:38AM (2 children)
Your whole post was presented in terms that were asymmetric, so you did. As you did in the above response.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 16 2019, @01:43PM (1 child)
Looking at one part of an equation is not necessarily asymmetric, except in attention.
In a free market price is determined by the intersection of the cost and demand curves. But that's just another way of saying that commodities will be sold at (roughly) cost, though it adds the detail that the cost will change depending on the volume being produced.
Please feel free to explain things more fully if you have a solid argument against that basic assumption of free-market economics.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday August 18 2019, @10:10AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves