Since the post mentions extreme price tags and US affordability, one of my pet issues is my persistent frustration that it is specifically US patients who usually bear the brunt of the pharmaceutical industry's costs. The industry gets more revenue from the US than the rest of the world combined, which falls largely on patients rather than the general public. My issue is not with low-income countries as much as with high-income countries -- the countries of northern and western Europe are not much poorer than the USA, but get modern biologics like monoclonal antibodies or GLP-1 agonists at prices 1/5 to 1/10 the US price, typically spread over the whole population through public healthcare or universal insurance.
I'd be interested in regulatory reform to make prices lower in the US -- preferably this will include making market entry cheaper, but I'm not against price controls if that's what everyone else is doing, especially if it will make the Europeans accept slightly higher prices to keep their pharma companies running. That's not so much of a matter for startups, though -- but maybe there are business opportunities for facilitating reliable international sales? Currently there's a risk, when you get drugs shipped, that you don't know you're importing the real deal from the country you think you are getting. There's a lot of money to be had for patients and vendors through arbitraging around the exceptionally high US prices. It will hurt the pharmaceutical companies' revenue if this takes off, but that might force them to make prices more equal -- economists are not usually against arbitrage.
It won't make healthcare accessible for "all," but it will make modern medications less prohibitively expensive for Americans.
Since the post mentions extreme price tags and US affordability, one of my pet issues is my persistent frustration that it is specifically US patients who usually bear the brunt of the pharmaceutical industry's costs. The industry gets more revenue from the US than the rest of the world combined, which falls largely on patients rather than the general public. My issue is not with low-income countries as much as with high-income countries -- the countries of northern and western Europe are not much poorer than the USA, but get modern biologics like monoclonal antibodies or GLP-1 agonists at prices 1/5 to 1/10 the US price, typically spread over the whole population through public healthcare or universal insurance.
I'd be interested in regulatory reform to make prices lower in the US -- preferably this will include making market entry cheaper, but I'm not against price controls if that's what everyone else is doing, especially if it will make the Europeans accept slightly higher prices to keep their pharma companies running. That's not so much of a matter for startups, though -- but maybe there are business opportunities for facilitating reliable international sales? Currently there's a risk, when you get drugs shipped, that you don't know you're importing the real deal from the country you think you are getting. There's a lot of money to be had for patients and vendors through arbitraging around the exceptionally high US prices. It will hurt the pharmaceutical companies' revenue if this takes off, but that might force them to make prices more equal -- economists are not usually against arbitrage.
It won't make healthcare accessible for "all," but it will make modern medications less prohibitively expensive for Americans.