> The thought of people dying in the streets from preventable disease and injury sounds pretty horrendous.
Funny that you raise FUD in your very next sentence, because that is itself FUD. Since the 1980s hospitals have been obliged to treat anyone who shows up.
> And it turns out that this medication is not as effective as the generic that would cost $2 per pill. But because there is no profitability this medication is not currently manufactured in the US.
That doesn't make sense. A generic is the same as the name-brand. You mean a different drug for the same disease, I presume.
And it doesn't make sense that there would be no profitability; by your numbers, a generic drug manufacturer could produce the $2 pill which works better than the $100 pill and sell it for $50, or $25, or whatever it wanted.
> America needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize we are little better than a third-world country for anyone below median income who doesn't have a good group health insurance policy.
Actually, one of the nice things about real third-world countries is that one can just go to the pharmacist and buy pills, instead of having to go through a professional gatekeepers' union (the AMA) to do so.
In practice, the active ingredient(s) are required to be the same, but there can be some variation in e.g. binders that can make differences. The characteristics of the generic (bioavailbility, onset time, etc) are only required to be within a certain range compared to the original, not be identical.
Funny that you raise FUD in your very next sentence, because that is itself FUD. Since the 1980s hospitals have been obliged to treat anyone who shows up.
> And it turns out that this medication is not as effective as the generic that would cost $2 per pill. But because there is no profitability this medication is not currently manufactured in the US.
That doesn't make sense. A generic is the same as the name-brand. You mean a different drug for the same disease, I presume.
And it doesn't make sense that there would be no profitability; by your numbers, a generic drug manufacturer could produce the $2 pill which works better than the $100 pill and sell it for $50, or $25, or whatever it wanted.
> America needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize we are little better than a third-world country for anyone below median income who doesn't have a good group health insurance policy.
Actually, one of the nice things about real third-world countries is that one can just go to the pharmacist and buy pills, instead of having to go through a professional gatekeepers' union (the AMA) to do so.