This week, the Politics Guys start off with something new and strange – bipartisanship breaking out in Congress. While neither Jay and Mike think this is the start of a trend, they’re glad that the U.S. has a budget for fiscal year 2016 (which started on October 1, 2015). Next, the Guys discuss the latest GOP debate (which neither of them thinks changed much of anything), the Federal Reserve’s move to raise interest rates, and why even though former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli is a Big Giant Ass, the anger against him is misplaced. Finally, Mike and Jay talk about President Obama’s appearance on Running Wild with Bear Grylls as well as the 30 percent of Republicans who want to bomb the fictional city of Agrabah, from the Disney movie Aladdin.
It is not up to the government to decide what is a “reasonable profit” to make on pharmaceuticals. While you are right, there are market failures, such as lack of competition, barriers to entry, etc, however without the US profit potential for drug companies you will not see the immense amount of R&D and innovation in medicine. So you would have fewer and less effective drugs rather than more expensive, but more effective drugs. The positive externalities of high profitability for pharmaceutical companies makes up for the market failures you mentioned.
So what is better for the overall health of the population? More effective medicine that is available to a smaller number of people, but still a large % of the population or less effective medicine available to everyone? I go with the former personally.
A fair point – one thing that would concern me with more regulation is the effect it might have on R&D.