10-17-2015, 12:13 PM
Quote:Not as a general practice, no. Only in extreme outlier situations.
I don't want the government to set the price at all. I don't get what's so hard to understand about my position, so I'll say it one more time:
If a medication is available that is necessary to keep a person alive and that person, insured or not, cannot afford that medication and there are no lower-cost medications with the same effects available, the pharmaceutical company should be required to make the drug affordable for that person and only that person, on a case-by-case basis. No one's talking about giving the drug away. If the pharmaceutical company has set the price of a medication needed to prolong a cancer patient's life at $15,000 per month's supply but that cancer patient is only making $3,000 per month and their insurance company only covers 50% of the drug's cost, the pharmaceutical company should lower the price of that one patient's supply so that it is affordable--not free--for that one patient, and the adjusted price should be reviewed monthly so that if the patient's income goes up or expenses go down, the cost of the drug increases.
I'm talking about true "take this or you die" life-saving drugs only. Not even quality of life drugs for COPD, asthma, whatever, just the drugs that a doctor would take the stand and tell a judge are absolutely essential to this particular person's survival, and that person would die in short order without them. That's it. My view, simply put, is that the right of a human being to continue being alive outweighs the right of a pharmaceutical company's right to charge whatever it wants whenever it wants, but that is the only case in which pharmaceutical companies should be compelled to lower prices by a government entity.
Once again, life and death only. I believe that a human being's right to life outweighs a pharmaceutical company's desire for profit.
See above.
OK.
If a person can't afford a lifesaving drug pharmaceutical companies already provide it at cost without government intervention. Even in the case of this particular dirtbag company their spokesman said they would do that.
In the rare case that some company would not agree to save the life of a poor person there is another alternative to death vs. government force. Concerned people can take up voluntary donations to pay for the medicine without forcing others to pay for it.
In all of these cases, someone is going to decide how much the person can afford. If that's some government bureaucrat (namely someone who majored in art history and can't get a real job) then the decision will probably be based on a coin flip.