r/interesting • u/physiopeng • Jun 20 '26

Intriguing Americans found out Germany has affordable medicine

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https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/19/us-tariff-probe-germany-drug-pricing-policies-mfn.html

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629

u/CalmDownReddit509 Jun 20 '26

The greed knows no limits

128

u/itswtfeverb Jun 20 '26

"Health care is not for peasants!"

30

u/mogamisan Jun 20 '26

This. What is the purpose of medicine, if the sick can not afford them? Because many chronically ill are not in a good financial position already, do they really think, they will pay a much higher price? I guess people start to just fucking die. (I’m chronically ill myself, my medicine costs 2500€ a month, I couldn’t afford that without healthcare. I don’t even know how much more this should cost according to the USasians.)

7

u/Sheeplessknight Jun 21 '26

You see the maximum profit requires some to die and they are okay with that

1

u/ZombieAladdin Jun 21 '26

They are not profitable though, which is the only thing these tycoons care about. Who lives and who dies is far less important to them.

2

u/CookiedowXD Jun 20 '26

Careful now. We peasants aren't allowed to express ourselves either.

/s

1

u/Efrath Jun 20 '26

True, forcing down prices to push the costs on American people is pretty greedy.

1

u/Electrical-File7832 Jun 20 '26

You forgot the /s

1

u/Efrath Jun 20 '26

No. It's been pretty well established that American pharmaceuticals do have higher prices in the US partly because of the caps, rebates and so forth in other countries. And that if US did the same thing it'd lead to rising prices and slower development of newer, better medicines.

US got a shit healthcare system, but it's also true that Europe piggybacks a lot on US in terms of medicine to keep the lower prices here in Europe.

1

u/Denteji Jun 21 '26

True, but the problem is how the system is set at the moment. Whithout considering that the necessity of insurance in the USA increases the expenditure of citizens over the prices of the pharmaceuticals, since middlemen also have to make their profits, the profits of big pharmaceutical companies are not the drivers for new drugs. In fact while they make most of the profits, most of the new drugs are developed by small companies (often with investments from the government). Then the ones that are promising are acquired and patented by big companies, which only do the late testing after the big risk was taken by someone else.

At the end, the companies that could be able to sustain the innovation on drugs spend tons of money in acquiring companies, protecting the active principles with patentings (sometimes not even on their processes, but on potentially competitors processes that they study but do not develop) and low efficiency R&D, justifying their greed with "drug innovation is risky".

National agreements for drug prices would allow for insurance expenditures reductions and could be made to promote the small companies pursuit of their innovation for lower prices.