On Mon, 30 Oct 2017 07:42:58 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 8:21:50 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 10:08:36 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 6:19:55 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:27:30 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 1:10:06 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 8:28:53 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 2:32:32 AM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:40:04 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 12:26:01 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 11:25:36 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 9:53:24 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 9:29:11 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 12:21:14 AM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:06:22 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/24/2017 9:24 PM, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 24 Oct 2017 11:42:41 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/24/2017 10:44 AM, AMuzi wrote:


an old observation but still true:
Under capitalism, it's man against man.
Under enlightened communism, it's the other way around.

I'd say that under modern American capitalism, it's billion dollar
corporation against man.

Probably true. But what is the alternate? Or perhaps, what is a
politically viable alternate?

It is tough to envision an alternative, especially a near-term one. The
fact is, large corporations have money to affect the election process in
ways that no individuals can hope counter.

Current Ohio example: Issue Two in this next election will involve
prices for pharmaceuticals. The measure is badly written in some ways,
but the essence is that no state agency should pay more for
pharmaceuticals than the prices negotiated by the Veteran's
Administration. (The VA is allowed to negotiate and does, just as do the
medical sytems in Canada, Britain, France, etc. and as a result they pay
FAR less.)

What I find interesting that in some countries.... (strangely Thailand
comes to mind :-) the price of certain, perhaps most, pharmaceuticals
is lower, sometimes much lower then in other countries. Sometimes very
near by.

I remember, after I retired and living in Thailand, I visited a
doctor in Singapore and mentioned that I could buy medicines in
Thailand cheaper then in Singapore. The doctor replied that I didn't
need to go all the way to Thailand, "just cross the causeway to
Malaysia".

In the U.S. I read about people crossing the border to Canada or
Mexico to buy medicine.

Granted that the cost of doing business is higher in the U.S., but
still.

As I said, there are problems with this issue. But it's amazing to watch
the tidal waves of advertising the pharmaceutical companies are funding
to have it defeated. Ads on TV are at least 10 to 1 against it. They are
spending fortunes in their efforts. Why? Because they have the money to
do so, and they want to keep getting that money.


Of course, but no different then any other company. Everybody knows
that Chevrolet is better then a Ford. Says so, right there on the T.V.
:-)

And of course, the ads are very misleading - such as "defeat it because
it doesn't cover 3/4 of Ohioans!" Right, because it applies only to
state agencies, and most don't get their medications that way.

Other examples abound. But when an industry like this has unlimited
money to spend, they can pretty much buy what they want.

Note to non-USians: The USA is one of only two developed nations where
drug companies can, and do, market prescription medications directly to
consumers; as in "Tell your doctor you want THIS prescription drug!" As
a result, TV ads are almost totally dominated by prescription medicine
ads and, of course, motor vehicle ads.

The cost of medicine outside of the US isn't any sort of comparison to those sold in the USA where most of the funding for medicine development occurs.

Not to mention that many medications are counterfeited outside of the USA and a great many of them are ineffective. I can tell the difference between my anti-convulsive mediation made by different manufacturers here.

Much of the research is done by foreign drug makers. My wife's drug was developed by Hoffman-LaRoche in Switzerland in the 1950s. It is typically prescribed to patients with Huntington's disease but is also used for other chorea disorders. Drugs purchased from legitimate Canadian pharmacies are typically the same brands available in the US or safe and effective generics from foreign manufacturers. This is not like buying fake Viagra from China via the internet.

There is no reason CMS should pay extortive prices for orphan or branded drugs available in Canada or Europe for a small fraction of the price -- except to pad the pockets of domestic sellers. The tax code already rewards manufacturers and others with depreciating intellectual property. No need to pay twice.

The USA does 43.7% of pharmaceutical research and development. ONE country does this out of 195 countries. And MANY of the drugs that are sold by competing foreign firms were developed in the US and were immediately copied the second that the patents ran out.

The company with the largest R&D budget is Swiss. The fact that a large number of drugs are patented by US companies also does not mean they were in fact developed in the US, particularly with the world-wide operations of most US drug manufacturers. Also, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866602/

Also, nobody is contending that US companies don't produce a lot of new "NME" (new molecular entities), but that does not mean US drug manufacturers should be allowed to price gouge or that CMS should not be allowed to negotiate prices. The US also makes a lot of cars, but that doesn't mean the GSA shouldn't negotiate the price of fleet vehicles -- or computers or durable medical equipment. Why should drugs be different? WalMart does it. Other health plans do it. Why not Medicare? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/wa...-medicare.html

The largest drug company in the world is Roche and they have the largest R&D budget and almost ALL of their companies are American.

Nope. Johnson & Johnson with 2016 revenues of 71.89 billion dollars is
the largest Pharmaceutical company in the world while Roche, which is
a Swiss company, had 2016 revenues of only 50.11 billion.


So why are you using an example of a holding company that has gone to a tax haven?

J&J isn't a drug company per se'. They manufacture medical devices and consumer goods which is where the vast majority of their money comes from.

Roche is an American company that moved to the tax haven of Switzerland. Calling them a Swiss company when they are nothing more than a holding company for American pharmaceutical companies is false advertising.

NO IT ISN'T. ROCHE IS A SWISS COMPANY AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. I REPEAT: ROCHE . . . SWISS. EOM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Hoffmann-La_Roche

-- Jay Beattie.

Continue telling me all about them when I worked for Genentech.

Genentech is a U.S. company that was fully acquired by Roche in 2009,
some 113 years after Roche was initially formed, as a Swiss company.

If they are making all or most of their money off of American companies they are nothing more than a Swiss holding company.

Sort of like Harley Davidson is a Thai company.... after all they
recently opened a factory in Rayong.

By the way, the move comes after Trump's decision to pull out of the
12-country Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which would
have abolished tariffs on Harley products across 40 per cent of the
world's economy.

In other words, if I gotta pay big money to export American made goods
I'll just build a factory where I don't have to do that.

So you think that Harley is going to be built in Thailand and not simply assembled.

Regardless, it is going to have a label that reads, "Product of
Thailand". Just exactly as "Ford Thailand" and "Chevrolet Thailand"
and "Honda Thailand" and "Mercedes Thailand" do.

By the way, Harley organized their first overseas plant in Manaus,
Brazil, taking advantage of the free economic zone there in 1998.
Almost 20 years ago.

--
Cheers,

John B.