« Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 414 -- Medical Malpractice Costs. | WILLisms.com | Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Seventy-One -- We're Getting Robbed. »

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 415 -- Socialism Kills Medical Progress.

Policies Have Consequences-

We live in exciting times. Medical breakthroughs are helping people live better and longer lives than ever before in human history. In a generation, at the current exponential pace of technological advancement, life will be even better than we can probably imagine.

Unfortunately, if our new socialist overlords get their way, that progress won't continue exponentially. Sure, we still may see improvements in science and medicine, but not at the rate mankind deserves.

Let's look at some pertinent numbers.

Major brain drain out of Europe:

“in 1990, the . . . pharmaceutical industry still invested 50% more in Europe than in the US . . . today, the same industry is investing 40% more in the US compared to Europe.”

Europe is no longer the place for prescription drug development:

"In 1992, 6 out of the 10 top medicines in worldwide sales were European, while in 2002 this figure had fallen to just 2.”

A visual of that figure:

In the meantime, America has added market share:

While in the late 1980s only 41% of the top 50 innovative drugs were of American origin, in the late 1990s the U.S. percentage climbed to 62%.

What might have been, meanwhile, had OECD countries not implemented price controls and other market distortions?

Well, here's a pretty good answer (.pdf):

"... 10-13 extra drug launches per year-- a 50 percent increase. In addition, there would potentially be 110-140 additional drugs overall in the global pharmacopoeia, of which 35-40 would likely be in new drug classes. In the United States... there would be 20-30 thousand extra R&D jobs (with even greater increases overseas), 15-20 thousand extra pharmaceutical jobs, and a further 55-65 thousand extra jobs elsewhere in the economy."

Meanwhile, because of volume and price controls, people are denied access to innovative drugs for quite a while (.pdf):

And even after medicines do become available in OECD countries, their use remains relatively muted, as the OECD countries continue using older drugs (.pdf):

The costs of subsidizing drugs and/or mandating lower prices are high indeed. Countries around the world can only "afford" (superficially) to manipulate the pharmaceutical market, because the United States government does so relatively little manipulation. If pharma is not profitable-- if pharma has little or no cash flow-- what would happen to these trajectories (.pdf):

And yet, Democrats now want the Federal Government to negotiate drug prices for consumers, which would produce the following results (.pdf):

• ...reduce pharmaceutical research and development investment annually by $5.6–11.6 billion, with the most likely effect at about $10 billion per year.

•This reduction in research and development investment will result in a loss of between 6 and 12 new medicines per year, with the most likely reduction at about 10.

•This reduced flow of new and improved medicines will cost Americans about 5 million life-years annually, which can be conservatively valued at about $500 billion annually, a figure far in excess of total
annual U.S. spending on pharmaceuticals.

This is the same philosophy that is driving our domestic auto industry in Michigan out of business. This is the vision Democrats have for America. We cannot let them succeed.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Medical Malpractice Costs.

Posted by Will Franklin · 8 February 2007 06:33 PM

Comments