re: Republicans and Democrats vote down amendment that would allow for cheaper drugs

No the whole argument is that we should support free trade wherever it makes sense.

If this results in no net benefit then that is fine, but let the market determine that.

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Booker's response points out that there were no provisions to hold Canadian drugs to US safety standards. He said that he favors allowing drugs to be imported but only if they are safe for US consumers.

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Translation:

Lobbyists of both the drug companies and lawyers oppose this.

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was not advocating regulating profit or anything of that nature.

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You want the government to negotiate prices because of various profit margins and cost disparities, but you're not advocating regulating profit?

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You want the government to negotiate prices because of various profit margins and cost disparities, but you're not advocating regulating profit?

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Not in the traditional sense.

Pharma companies have disparate negotiating power in these other places - a private company negotiating with only one entity: the state. As long as that is the case, we are going to need the American government to supplement the companies at the table and even the power balance.

It's either that, OR one of the following options:
1) Continue in the current paradigm where we pay out the arse (5X or more of these other countries) at wholesale price
2) Accept dramatically reduced innovation in the pharma market whereby the U.S. government acts as other OECD countries do and acts as the sole or main negotiator of drug prices - much much lower revenues, much much lower ability to fund CAPEX and R&D, much much less innovation and new drugs on the market
3) Push for de-regulation in the health insurance market abroad so as to create market conditions more similar to ours (and thus, drug prices can be negotiated more freely). Good luck on this, I guess.

I am as pro-market and free trade as the next guy, but we are constrained by the realities of this industry. What do you do?

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If we're paying 5x that of other countries, are you saying we would see an 80% savings in pharma costs by allowing the government to negotiate pharma prices?

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To be clear, that's a rough number and varies dramatically by product, but yes, all other conditions being the same, having the government be the sole negotiator with pharmaceutical companies for drugs would dramatically reduce the "cost" - or at least, the price at which we purchase the drugs. The nature of the negotiating power is dramatically tilted towards the purchaser in this scenario.

However, this would result in two huge events that would be horrible for us:
- The size of the biopharma firms would be dramatically reduced, and innovation and new product development would basically come to a standstill
- Many biopharma firms would probably leave the U.S. altogether

As it currently stands in the biopharma and medical device market, the U.S. is like if all the OPEC countries were one country that controlled 80% of the world's resources in this one critical market...

Except the biopharma is not and can never be commoditized (like oil) because of IP (essentially, the IP is the product). Other countries realized this early and know how to play this game with (mostly American) pharma companies. Pharma companies also know this, so they have to make up costs somewhere. It results in a completely screwed up value creation/value capture supply chain whereby the American pharma consumer pays for a great deal of the value creation and actually gets much less of the value capture.

I am also fairly certain that other countries (Argentina, for example) lobby the hell out of the U.S. Congress either through middlemen or under the table to keep the paradigm this way. Artificially (far) lower drug prices disguise the true costs of their much more socialistic healthcare systems to their citizens, keeps them popular and in power, and is good PR to stand up to the big bad U.S. pharma companies.

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be clear, that's a rough number

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It's a bullshite number. Savings from letting the government negotiate pharma pricing have been estimated at $15B in savings.

The number one drive of pharma price is demand. Pass more cost to the consumer at the point of purchase and drive down down utilization. Demand drops, price drops.

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Nope - the number one driver is R&D.

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I think we're talking about different things and I don't really care to talk past you.

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Besides that, demand is extremely sticky in this market. Consumers aren't very price-sensitive even at the point of purchase.

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I think you may be completely uninformed about price as it relates to pharmaceuticals.

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I'm still waiting for a legitimate reason not to let the free market determine whether drug prices should be lower.

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Patent law? Avoiding importation of drugs made on the Indian subcontinent that subvert it?

Patents are the explicit purview of the federal government (the U.S. Constitution).

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frick Corey Booker and every other politician who voted against this amendment.

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And frick every political who voted for it and every dumbass who supports it for failing to take into account the millions of people alive today thanks to U.S. pharmaceutical companies, the millions more lives made better and the billions of dollars paid to retirees, pension plans and seniors by those same companies.
frick the simple-minded.