Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Well since I'm accused of creating irrelevant side arguments so I can win, let me ask what point burger's point raises.
This started when I said Canada has bad medical and its citizens come here, SAM said "busloads go to Canada to buy pharms." (Of course if true the buses would be raided at the border) I said thats another reason why turning the US into Canada would screw up our health care- pharm cos. would stop developing.
burger points out profits are mainly during the patent period- okay- I don't see how that impacts my argument.
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Sure, but it makes your argument irrelevant. People take buses to Canada. You win. People take buses to NYC. 1-1.
The core of the argument is that by allowing the reimportation of drugs from Canada you're undercutting american drug co. profitability. Same as if you impose price regulation on those drugs in the US. Well, you're still winning. But so what.
Because my response was exactly that, so what. You have to demonstrate that hurting profitability is a bad thing for US society. It is possible, see Viscusi et al., to over protect. And it's my contention, admittedly without support, that we overspend on healthcare and therefore create incentives for overinvestment in health care R&D. So, if you lower the profits drug cos. make, just possibly you're reducing the amount of R&D to the socially optimal level.
