NationStates Jolt Archive

It is my honour to announce a long overdue proposal to place a price control on medicines distributed by private pharmaceuticals. The greatest demand for medicine is among the lower-class citizens of the world who cannot afford medical insurance to cure against common diseases, and the only way for them to keep healthy is to buy the medicines they need. The prices that are charged for these medicines are ridiculous, and very few of those who need them the most are able to purchase them. I urge any UN delegates who are concerned about their well-being of their worst-off citzens to approve of this resolution. Link to proposal (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal/start=38)

EDIT: Proposal has been modified. See below for link to new proposal.

Anyone who is concerned with the well-being of the poor (or anyone else) will definitely NOT approve this proposal. If drug companies can't sell their products a profit, why on earth would they continue producing them, let alone invest billions in researching new ones?
The proposal requires, de facto, that all drugs be distributed for free (since not everyone has any income at all with which to buy drugs); even if it allowed drug companies to charge something for drugs, it would still end all pharmaceutical research; and most current medicines would go out of production, because even if they were sold at the cost of manufacture, many people could not afford them.

Prove to me that with the skyrocketing costs of clinical trials and discovery phases that this will not bankrupt most of the pharmaceutical companies performing new drug research and I won't have a problem with this. However, you will not be able to demonstrate that.

Debilitating big pharma by destroying their profitability would do more harm than good.

While the intent of your proposal is noble in scope, it is poor in implementation.

I humbly ask that you reconsider your stance and try to provide a more rational approach, perhaps establishing which drugs are considered urgently needed, and helping to acquire low-cost liscensing of the needed patents to allow faster deployment of lower-cost generic forms of name-brand drugs, for the sole purpose of going to those in low-class regions, while maintaining the full-price, name-brand drugs availability to the rest of the world. While this may be more difficult to deploy, it would not crush companies, causing mass layoffs of their employees due to their astronomical operating margins.

The Parliament of Scheelia has considered modifying the original proposal and is currently writing a new draft in accordance to the arguments provided.

The Parliament of Scheelia has rewritten the original document from scratch and has presented it for approval. [http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal/start=49]New link[/url]

It is my honour to announce a long overdue proposal to place a price control on medicines distributed by private pharmaceuticals. The greatest demand for medicine is among the lower-class citizens of the world who cannot afford medical insurance to cure against common diseases, and the only way for them to keep healthy is to buy the medicines they need. The prices that are charged for these medicines are ridiculous, and very few of those who need them the most are able to purchase them. I urge any UN delegates who are concerned about their well-being of their worst-off citzens to approve of this resolution. Link to proposal (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal/start=38)

EDIT: Proposal has been modified. See below for link to new proposal.

In terms of the number of people killed in the 20th century, price controls are second only to war. When Mao tried price controls to make food affordable to the poor in the 1950s, 40 million Chinese starved to death. You are trying to pass a law against bad weather here, and it will only cause more death and suffering than you're trying to solve.

There is no valid reason to tell a creator what he is allowed to charge for his products.

It is my honour to announce a long overdue proposal to place a price control on medicines distributed by private pharmaceuticals. The greatest demand for medicine is among the lower-class citizens of the world who cannot afford medical insurance to cure against common diseases, and the only way for them to keep healthy is to buy the medicines they need. The prices that are charged for these medicines are ridiculous, and very few of those who need them the most are able to purchase them. I urge any UN delegates who are concerned about their well-being of their worst-off citzens to approve of this resolution. Link to proposal (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal/start=38)

EDIT: Proposal has been modified. See below for link to new proposal.

In terms of the number of people killed in the 20th century, price controls are second only to war. When Mao tried price controls to make food affordable to the poor in the 1950s, 40 million Chinese starved to death. You are trying to pass a law against bad weather here, and it will only cause more death and suffering than you're trying to solve.

TGM, from what I have gathered you are FOR an international patenting agency. So I don't see how you can consider yourself right in any way on this issue.

If you allow no competition in the market for a drug, and have no price restrictions, then it will most certainly sell for an extremely high price (unless of course there is a counterpart to that drug that is either close in effectiveness or the same). There is a point where you have to draw the line between the amount of money they are allowed charge for a drug being reasonable considering the amount of money put into R&D, the amount of money they are allowed to charge being unreasonable because it too highly restricts how much they can put into R&D, and the amount of money they charge being unreasonable because it is far too high for the profits to be sensibly spent on R&D. This is why the government must make some way for the price of drugs to be limited.

I personally like the way Clinton came up with, take price restrictions off drugs and let the companies in America compete with the companies in Canada, it not only keeps the prices of drugs down, but it gives a boost to the economy (just as competition always does). But if there was international patents on the drugs, then there would no doubt arise some sort of prescription drug monopoly, where one company manages to buy all or most of the patents for prescription drugs.

There is no valid reason to tell a creator what he is allowed to charge for his products.

And if the man who invents the AIDS's vaccine wants to charge 70 billion dollars a gram I suppose you would still have that stance?

Yes, why wouldn't I?

I'm not a hypocrite, and I know right from wrong.

Yes, why wouldn't I?

I'm not a hypocrite, and I know right from wrong.

You just keep telling yourself that, maybe sooner or later somebody will agree with you. :roll:

To improve the conditions of the poor is, in practice, always a very difficult thing. Every scheme will have consequences beyond those intended, and often as not the complex reverberations will, in the end, make things worse for everyone, including the supposed beneficiaries.
Of all the schemes to alleviate the plight of the "underprivileged" that have been tried, price controls are probably the worst. When supply and demand are not allowed to reach equilibrium in the market, other solutions will be found for reconciling them, such as rationing and black markets.
For instance, people may purchase products in low-cost markets and re-sell them at slight mark-up to people who are supposed to be paying a much higher price. Sellers may decide to simply not sell at all in markets where they lose money or that might undercut their price in other markets. Insurance companies might stop offering prescription drug coverage, since it is no longer needed, making hundreds of millions more people dependent on the price controls (and depriving the drug companies of most of their revenue). Short supplies in low-cost markets would lead to rationing, probably via criminal syndicates in some countries.
It does no good to pretend that drug companies (or any companies) will do whatever is wanted of them in return for tax incentives or other bribes. They won't comply unless the value of the incentives is more than enough to cover the cost of compliance, and that means they will be utterly dependent on government largesse. What you will end up with is that the drug companies will be state-managed enterprises. When they're no longer responsible for their own profits, guess how efficient their research efforts will be....

We sympathize with the desire to provide a better life for the suffering masses, but we cannot support plans that, however well intentioned, are more likely to increase suffering than to alleviate it, while causing numerous other problems to boot.

99% of the time, price controls cause more suffering and hurt the people they are supposed to help. They cause massive economic inefficiency, and often cause terrible shortages. Plus, price controls ALWAYS cause a black market, and black market = crime and fraud = bad.

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In theory, the high costs are attributed to the research and development costs.

Are you going to tell them what they can and cannot spend?

Yes. Finally someone interested enough in Public Healthcare.

Believe what you want, but my Senators are all required to have completed a high-school level world history course and tend to vote against anything that has caused 75+ million deaths in one century alone.

Yes. Finally someone interested enough in Public Healthcare.

Believe what you want, but my Senators are all required to have completed a high-school level world history course and tend to vote against anything that has caused 75+ million deaths in one century alone.

So, aging is bad and should be banned?

Price controls are bad and economically restricting, but more often than not, no price controls results in price gouging and public outrage: see California.

There's middle ground somewhere here, but no one's found it.

Drug companies make enormous profits.
Look at all they spend on advertising- for prescription medicines, no less!
They make money in those advanced countries which have some economic controls.
Just putting a cap on profit would be sufficient. Let it decrease over the patent lifetime so that the investment cost is recaptured early. Profit would be ensured and public health promoted.

Drug companies often go bankrupt too.
No one with any economic education whatsoever would EVER support price controls of any sort.

Price controls = rationing = shortages. ALWAYS.

Price controls are bad and economically restricting, but more often than not, no price controls results in price gouging and public outrage: see California.

There's middle ground somewhere here, but no one's found it.

Occasionally you'll have price gouging, but in the United States 99.9999% of all goods and services you use have no price controls. And almost none of this are gouged prices. Price gouging is a form of price control, designed to keep prices high instead of keeping prices low. The biggest example of price gouging in the United States is the minimum wage.

You have a point in that price gouging is a form of price control. However, price control is comissioned by the government while price gouging (literal term) is controlled by companies.

Unless you have a situation like America, where the buisness of government is buisness and the government of buisness is a bunch of corperations.

Of course, price gouging is relative.

If there is a lack of competition in a sector, prices will rise.
Or if all the companies own each other, another American trait.

Yet, in America, we still have the most buisness regulation in the world.

To quote Greg Palast, "We tried it the other way. That didn't work."

So instead we expiriment on African nations. Y'know, cause its just so fun watching their economies implode.

Price controls are bad and economically restricting, but more often than not, no price controls results in price gouging and public outrage: see California.

There's middle ground somewhere here, but no one's found it.

Occasionally you'll have price gouging, but in the United States 99.9999% of all goods and services you use have no price controls. And almost none of this are gouged prices. Price gouging is a form of price control, designed to keep prices high instead of keeping prices low. The biggest example of price gouging in the United States is the minimum wage.

I think it might be prudent to point out that the reason most products have no price controls is because there is room for competition. When you have a patented product you can't have competition.

Price controls are bad and economically restricting, but more often than not, no price controls results in price gouging and public outrage: see California.

There's middle ground somewhere here, but no one's found it.

Occasionally you'll have price gouging, but in the United States 99.9999% of all goods and services you use have no price controls. And almost none of this are gouged prices. Price gouging is a form of price control, designed to keep prices high instead of keeping prices low. The biggest example of price gouging in the United States is the minimum wage.

I think it might be prudent to point out that the reason most products have no price controls is because there is room for competition. When you have a patented product you can't have competition.

You can have a comparable product that uses a slightly different technology. Windows is patented. That doesn't mean we need price controls on Windows to prevent price gouging.

When you have a patented product you can't have competition.
Wrong. Other producers just have to do their own research and patent competing products, instead of ripping off the research of others.