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More drugmakers hike U.S. prices as new year begins:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drugmakers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N), Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O), and Biogen Inc (BIIB.O) hiked U.S. list prices on more than 50 drugs on Wednesday, bringing total New Year’s Day drug price increases to more than 250, according to data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that drugmakers including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK.L) and Sanofi SA (SASY.PA) were planning to increase prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1.
Nearly all of the price increases are below 10% and the median price increase is around 5%, according to 3 Axis.
More early year price increases could still be announced.
Soaring U.S. prescription drug prices are expected to again be a central issue in the presidential election. President Donald Trump, who made bringing them down a core pledge of his 2016 campaign, is running for re-election in 2020.
[...] The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other countries where governments directly or indirectly control the costs, making it the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 03 2020, @12:42PM
1) Only a small fraction of americans, certainly not the majority, pay for health care. Fully socialized for poor, elderly, etc. Most of the rest are on some W-2 employee's family plan. Only a tiny fraction of the population still pays, capitalist style, for health insurance. Naturally, "we can bill the insurance co or government anything we want" leads to greedy provider companies sending in crazy bills. Some sort of military takeover where we get all our medical care from army combat medics seems the only way out of this problem. Remember empire building always happens even (especially in?) historically in communist countries, so just inserting the government everywhere doesn't mean your local hospital administrator won't featherbed budgets anymore just because he pledges his allegiance to Marx like a university professor has to currently.
2) Education is already free, just do MOOCs online. Or read free books at the free library. A bigger problem is americans spend a lot of time and money watching legacy media which would provide plenty of time and material to learn, which they avoid doing at all costs. A nation that proudly never programmed their VCR clocks and remote controls isn't going to suddenly work for a math PHD simply because its now free. What you're talking about is making authenticated authority paper degrees from incredibly expensive to operate legacy institutions free, which is obviously unwise. Funneling enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to legacy orgs will make their paper degree products as worthless as high school diplomas. Without any money to regulate and limit the process, it'll simply no longer be relevant vocationally. Which is kinda whats happening already in less vocational degree fields. Taking on a mortgage sized tuition loan for a liberal arts degree doesn't make a waitress a better waitress or a better person, it just makes her miserably poorer for the rest of her life, and once that meme percolates thru society there will be an immense crash in higher education. Once the next generation red pills into "Only poor people go to college" theres not going to be much societal pressure to make a shit product that no one wants free via massive new taxes. With obvious exceptions for vocational STEM degrees.
3) The USA exists to serve Israel and we don't get to make decisions like that. They say "bomb and invade iraq" and we say yes sir and do it. The US military is not controlled by the US people. It doesn't matter what we vote for.
4) Ah boomer bashing. Along with certain religious tribal affiliations (see #3)