Do you think healthcare and prescription meds in USA are still unaffordable for most people? How do we fix it?

Do you think healthcare and prescription meds in USA are still unaffordable for most people? How do we fix it?
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1 Answer

Answer :

answer:The only way it gets ‘fixed’ is by legislation and price controls, and that will never happen. The problem with price controls is that it takes any incentive away from the manufacturer, because price controls ultimately mean profit controls. Price controls are themselves a distortion of the free market. The best way to reduce the price of Rx meds is to reduce the exclusive patent ownership time from 17 years (what it is today) to something more like 5 years. That would draw new companies into the market, and presumably the competition would help keep prices down. The other thing to do is to have competition from the get-go. The inventor gets the patent but by law at least two other companies would be immediately sub-licensed, again for competition’s sake. But the end result of screwing with a market economy is that it has unseen and unplanned for consequences which sometimes work perversely to kill the principle they are trying to save.
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