Re:U.S. to set up plan aimed at allowing prescription drugs ...
by dv_dt on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @01:07PM
(#20576152)
It's naive to think that high capital, high knowledge required industries would suddenly be in a neat price competition market if we only just stopped regulating the patents or enforcing manufacturing quality standards.
Expired patents didn't keep generics manufacturers from raising prices on US consumers. And even allegedly colluding on price fixing.
And removal of manufacturing QA is a recipe for flooding the market with counterfeit and ineffective drugs. Imagine if you didn't know if your cancer drug actually had sufficient active ingredients in it or any active ingredients for that matter. Individual testing at scale for something as complex as drugs is massively more expensive and fraught with distributing all sorts of failures.
That is not to say we shouldn't fight for efficient regulation, and against regulatory capture.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
> The word "rent" does not refer specifically to payment on a lease but rather to Adam Smith's division of incomes into profit, wage, and rent.[4] The origin of the term refers to gaining control of land or other natural resources.
Our current regulatory environment sets up a situation where you can only buy medication from either one manufacturer, or a limited set of manufacturers, who then charge whatever they want.
But, going into more detail is very political, and much more political than I think is appropriate for a Hacker News discussion.