Great for pharma stockholders, terrible for American citizens.

Let's stop subsidizing drug R&D for the world on the backs of US citizens who are being squeezed to death by Washington and a for profit healthcare system.

Hell, how much of the money is spent on marketing, not actual R&D? It seems like there is a lot of Hollywood accounting in pharma.

Only $5 billion a year.

https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/09/drug-industry-advertisin...

> Ad spending soared more than 60 percent in the last four years, hitting $5.2 billion last year.

> And there’s no sign it’s slowing. On the contrary: Nine prescription drugs are on pace to break $100 million worth of TV ad time this year.

That's a fair argument but I'm more interested in how much R&D happens under single payer systems.

Does the NIH and NSF not provide a pipeline for drug research in the US?

Did you know the CEO of Mylan, the company that makes epipens made $98 million last year? Is that reasonable?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/31/investing/epipen-mylan-chair...

Well the board felt it was reasonable, and I'd expect the board of a publicly traded company to know more about its finances than me.

The question was about how much R&D happens in single-payer counties, not how much one particular CEO made. I am a proponent of single-payer health care in the US but responding to unrelated, valid questions with, "yeah, but this one person made a lot of money and that makes me mad!" is ridiculous.

That CEO only made that amount because of FDA regulations related to the manufacture of generics, as well as her family connections.

http://amp.timeinc.net/time/money/4502891/epipen-pricing-sca...

My point is that the entire for profit healthcare system in the US is broken, and it's time to burn it to the ground.

> responding to unrelated, valid questions with, "yeah, but this one person made a lot of money and that makes me mad!" is ridiculous.

Waste is waste, and must be eliminated from the system with extreme prejudice.

Excessive profits are waste.

Reminds me of a good SSC post.

> The problem with the pharmaceutical industry isn’t that they’re unregulated just like chairs and mugs. The problem with the pharmaceutical industry is that they’re part of a highly-regulated cronyist system that works completely differently from chairs and mugs.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-dr...

> That's a fair argument but I'm more interested in how much R&D happens under single payer systems.

Half of all medical and pharmaceutical research in the world is directly funded by the US. That number doesn't include indirect funding which takes place as well - for example, pharmaceutical companies that are based in Europe (such as Astra Zeneca) often receive the funding for their research from the US, and use additional indirect funding methods to essentially subsidize their research that takes place outside the research with the money they make in the US.

The US's market share of medical research has dropped a bit in recent years, but not because countries with single-payer systems are picking up the pace - it's because the research industries in China and India have grown incredibly fast in the last five years.

GSK is British. Novartis is Swiss. Roche is Swiss. Bayer is German. In short: plenty.

What about it? What R&D has been done, for example, in the past few decades for routine doctor exams and to combat obesity?

Outside of niche drugs for rare diseases, what has R&D done to reduce costs?

Sure but why do i as a American consumer subsidize drug invention for England or India?

If the goverment wants to pay for R and D awesome. Dont put it on my bill to see the doctor.

> Sure but why do i as a American consumer subsidize drug invention for England or India?

You don't. You subsidize the massive advertising budgets of the companies in the US.

Drug advertising -> Drug Sales -> Drug Profits -> Profit for Drug Company -> More R&D For Next Drug

If all drug advertising went to 0, it would not significantly impact drug prices in the US. It might in fact increase prices as there would be less users per drug. (Which of course may be a better result for society, but I digress)