It’s almost like health care and free market economics aren’t compatible
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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The pharma industry likes to defend its pricing by saying:
The second pill cost 25¢.
The first pill cost $800 million.
What they never actually say is that the US government (thereby the taxpayers) heavily subsidized most of that cost.
Big Pharma could use its own Mario Brother, just saying.
Even if we go by 0 subsidies as an argument, anything past around the 800 thousandth pill sold has already paid for itself and is now pure profit.
The argument deserves to burn alongside whoever uses it to extort people for life saving care.
Let's-a go!
Also most pharma research is done by public universities that private pharma companies then buy the rights to.
The clinicals tend to be ran by the companies pushing for go to market. Those also cost millions
Most? I'm incredulous but I don't know the actual answer.
Brave to assume that only one country gives a subsidy.
Australia has the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that does the same thing.
Best selling? Or largest profit margin?
Yah, bestselling is wrong.
Most profitable would be the term.
Drugs can be massively expensive to make with some needing many decades of work so it makes sense they are sold for a lot to gain back that investment. The only issue is if they don't drop the price after they have recouped the cost and profit they needed. Capitalism strikes again.
This only has legs if they’re developed without being largely government funded, which to my understanding isn’t true for a lot of drugs.
I think they'd justify that by saying they need to ensure the funds they need for future research on other breakthrough treatments. This is not entirely baseless, but just another nail in the coffin for why medical research shouldn't be funded primarily through capitalist methods.
400000% markup seems a bit excessive
Reasonably priced recreational drugs:
the 3 addictive powders: $10/oz, pure
Weed: $100/lb
You could actually earn plenty of money at half these prices, but I made allowances for sin taxes.
Have you seen how much it costs to develop novel drugs? It's definitely a bit excessive, but also probably not as much as you think.
Agreed
A condition of public funding should be that aggregate internal rate of return, exclusive of executive team remuneration, should be published and capped, verified by independent audit.
The patent eventually expires and then the generics come out more cheaply.
It doesn't look like it is going to be any cheaper
Don't worry, the government subsidies a huge portion of that research already.
Bristol Myers Squibb also makes my cancer drug, Sprycel, which has a similar price tag at just over $18k a month without insurance.
They also make my mother's heart medication Eliquis, which is similarly costly as well.
Have you considered just not having cancer instead?
Hm I wonder why they can't find a cure for cancer
Cures don’t come with a subscription model.
Ironically, one of the forces that push back against that are the much-derided health insurance companies. Health insurance has the exact opposite incentive structure, they prefer a cure over an ongoing treatment.
Also, do you think the owners and executives of pharma companies never get cancer themselves, or never have friends and family with cancer?
In reality the reasons why cures are less common than treatments are complex, it's not pure evil motivating it. Cures are just hard. Especially for something like cancer, which is not just one single disease but rather an whole vast constellation of different diseases. Some kinds of cancer have been cured, and new cures keep coming out all the time. We just haven't done them all yet.
I keep telling these people this. Any cure for cancer is going to make it to market because there's money to be made. If there's money to be made, somebody is gonna make it, even if it's not the people making the current treatments who stand to lose out.
Also the clout for releasing a cancer cure. It would definitely boost the company's valuation.
All it would take is a little competition to solve
Yet apparently we can't even do that