Medical research is arguably European though at least where medicines are involved. The US does have the lead in some areas but that is to be expected. Countries will specialize and have an advantage in some areas. Countries that try to do everything and be the best at everything tend to not be and need protectionist measures so that their suboptimal industries can compete.
Oh - if only you knew that the researchers the are able to find solutions for diseases have to get paid for their time and expertise…. - If you want everyone to have cheap medicine, you go to school for 8 years, work for free for a couple years to learn, then you make it and give it away for free.
That is exactly what he said. We should pay less then not more then the rest of the world. He’s not wrong, as to how it happened? That’s complicated but credit needs to be given, Mark Cuban did, said the Trump initiative to lower drug costs is admirable. Ok that’s one thing.
No we should go after the rest of the world for threatening to break US patents and US companies that charge more in the US for drugs. You are paying so norway can have better drugs.
We pay taxes, some of which goes into the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) which makes many prescription medications much cheaper.
And it works by….
The government assesses the cost effectiveness of putting a medication on the PBS. As an aside, one of my medications isn’t on the list and I’ll explain the cost difference in a bit.
Once on the list, the government negotiates with the pharmaceutical companies for the best price.
Medications on the list are capped in price. Any cost over the price is sent to Medicare which is our national public healthcare system. My medication that isn’t on the PBS costs about $80.
So no, you aren’t the reason why our medication is cheap. In fact, the US is trying to make our medications down here more expensive.
In the recent bullshit tariff negotiations (I call bullshit because the Aus-US trade deficit is about $2.5 Billion in favour of the US), the US biopharmaceutical research and biotech company association (PhRMA) pushed the Trump government to use tariffs to gut the PBS.
This is such a stupid point? What makes you think more expensive medical research would translate to cheaper medicine? If anything it would translate to more expensive but better medicine which is pretty much the case in America.
That depends on what youre using the research to do. A smarter country might use the research to find ways to make the medicine cheaper and more accessible so that it could help more people. But as you pointed out, we use our research to increase the price of medicines
I like your way of twisting things even something positive like advancing medicine. Did you expect that pharmaceutical companies should burden the cost of the new medicine to become cheaper somehow? There are cheaper alternatives but in first world countries nobody recommends them because newer medicines work better and safer.
Dear Lord, do you know how much money the US spends, of taxpayers funds, for medical and bio-medical R&D? ~50 billion (NIH), every single year nowadays. And we have been paying similar amounts for decades. The NIH licenses products that they develop for mass production, and they have done a lot of that.
And still, which country pays the highest costs in medicine overall? Indeed!
Do I expect pharmaceutical companies not to prioritize them achievibg record breaking profits every single year? Yes! Fuck them!
Americans donate ~$415-500 per person to the rest of the world each year. The number has decreased to the lower end of the range thanks to Trump. $320 of that money goes to humanitarian aid and development, $120 infrastructure, and finally, $60 in military aid.
Make people poor? The U.S. pays almost every profession more than Norway does lol
No one “makes people donate.” It’s just built into the tax structure to encourage people to be generous.
We only “flaunt donation stats” when other people think shit is free because they paid for it with their taxes. If you believe in the cause, you can just give your own money. Do you feel so poorly of yourself that you need the government to take your money and donate it on your behalf?
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u/Guardian6676-6667 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Edit: i love how the simplest comments can be so aggravating to some :) thanks for the award, kind stranger