What makes you think drug prices in other countries aren't 'market' prices? Is it because they're negotiated on a country-wide level by the governments? I.e. because the buyer is a larger entity than the seller? But when the buyer is smaller than the multinational drug company, such as an individual or a medium-sized insurance company, then the price somehow is a market price?
> What about the fact that Americans are essentially subsidizing world health care via private R&D?
This tired argument again. Given that pharmaceutical companies spend more on just marketing than they do on R&D [1], isn't it more accurate to say that the US is subsidizing drug ads? How high would drug prices have to get, and how small the R&D budget, before you'd stop claiming the US is 'subsidizing' R&D? Or would whoever pays the highest price always be hailed as subsidizing R&D, to try and guilt everyone else into paying more?
> The reason a huge majority of pharma innovation happens here is because there is an incentive for it.
Given that drugs are sold internationally, pharma could continue their extortionate pricing in the US no matter where the drugs are developed, so the cost of drugs doesn't act as an incentive for where to conduct innovation.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
Pfizer, for example, does spend more on “SG&A” than it does on “R&D” but marketing makes up just a small part of “SG&A”.
> Pfizer topped that list with $622.3 million in ad spending last year. Pfizer came in fourth on FierceBiotech's list of R&D budgets, with $7.9 billion. That means DTC ads were less than one-tenth the size of its R&D budget.
Moreover, look across any number of research industries be it Pharma, Tech, Industrial Automation, whatever, you will find SG&A as a rule of thumb tends to roughly equal R&D spending as a total share of expenses.
[1] - https://www.fiercepharma.com/regulatory/does-pharma-spend-mo...
Annual drug R&D spending isn’t “small.” In 2014-2017, pharmaceutical R&D was about the same size as total VC investment nationwide. (There is some overlap between the two numbers.)
Additionally, the “marketing expenditure” angle is an ignorant trope. The pharmaceutical industry is as efficient as other high tech industries in concerting revenue to R&D. In 2017 US pharma companies spent 20% of revenues on R&D. That’s at the top of the range compared to companies like Intel, Facebook, Apple, and Google. https://www.theatlas.com/charts/N1Gs8E4v. Few would deny that Google is a highly innovative, R&D-heavy company, but it's at 15%.
“Market Prices” are what the market pays (ie. what the customer thinks it is worth). I think you might be confusing it with “suggested retail price” which is what companies think their product is worth.
The customers are the "market"! So the price they pay is literally the market price!
For profit insurance means getting the highest premiums while giving out the lowest payouts. That’s American capitalism to you. There is such little transparency that the big players can price set whatever they want and coerce the public into paying it. After all, it’s your life.
America is America because of the mega corps. Some give us 280 characters, some fly shit into space, some let people die because they got no paper.