Fairness is a matter of degree. Surely there is room to accept the concept here that for an enterprise to research, develop, and produce a product, it stands to reason that they will want to make money on it. Otherwise, the risk plus fixed and variable costs associated with running any enterprise is not worth it in the end. Further, by allowing someone to produce a product which they can then sell at a profit, it provides an incentive for people to produce products and make new developments.Rum wrote:Like so much else about American health care - exploitation seems to be the name of the game.
While the name of the game is "exploitation" in the sense of making and selling a product, there is another name to the game, which is that the overwhelming majority of medical breakthroughs and developments are taking place in the United States. So, there are two sides to the coin. At some point there must be balance. Doctors and drug manufacturers are not public servants, who are obliged to provide their services and products for free.
By the same token, the regime in which we operate now has medical devices being sold so cheaply in some markets around the world that they can be "reimported" into the US and still sold for less than the price of product originally aimed at the US market. Johnson and Johnson, for example, sells diabetes test strips over in Asia at cut-rate prices. So, there is a thriving reimportation business in the US, where importers here in the states make deals with J&J distributors to sell product directed to Kazakhstan or some such place back into the US. It winds up on drug store shelves. There are little notations on the boxes "not for retail sale" or "not for sale in the US", but independent drug stores get them for such good prices, that they sell them anyway. Check it out - generally if you go to a lesser known drug store, the smaller chains or an independent. You'll find those kinds of products.
The manufacturer tries to control where there products can be sold. They try to designate the market, or that it's not for retail sale, or that it's not for re-sale, etc. However, the law is that once they sell it, they have no right to control what happens downstream.
So, there definitely is some effort on the part of the big drug companies to sell at high prices here in the first world, and then low in the third world. But, I'd think lefties would think that made great sense....
Shot yourself in the foot again 
