Quote:
Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
And they may also engage in price discrimination, as when they charge some consumers higher prices than others (e.g., US vs. Canada, insured vs. uninsured).
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They aren't voluntarily engaging in price discrimination when they charge lower prices in the countries with socialized medicine. That is forced on them by those countries.
Unlike the US, those countries don't have just compensation clauses in their constitutions (some don't even have constitutions at all). They have single payer health care systems in which the single payer is the goverment and also can legislate the patent rights. If the drug companies won't give the socialized medicine countries the drugs at the prices they want to pay, the countries can issue compulsory licenses on their patents to generic companies to manufacturer the drugs at an acceptable price. Essentially, by law they allow the generic companies to infringe the patents so that there can be no monopoly pricing.
That leaves the drug companies only with the US market to recoup their R&D costs.
The problem isn't the drug companies. The problem is that the rest of the world wants the US consumer to pay for drug development.
BTW - if you want to get angry about monopoly pricing, vent your anger at Microsoft. At least the drug companies sell products that actually work.
