The Trump administration is launching a full-scale charm offensive across Europe to persuade governments to follow Britain’s lead to pay more for medicines.
U.S. embassies across the continent are being mobilized to deliver a message to European capitals: American patients are paying too much for medicines — around three times more than Germany for new drugs — and Europe better chip in.
If not, the bloc risks losing out on pharmaceutical investment and access to new drugs, two industry figures with knowledge of negotiations told POLITICO.
Is thi8s something governments control? Or just a result of allowing health care systems to negotiate drug prices, which the socialized systems do better because of their enormous clout?
I mean, we could do that to, if Congress didn’t (mostly) prohibit Medicare from doing that, right? Then the private, for profit (and highly profitable) companies could decide whether they’d rather sell more at a lower price or fewer at a high price. At the moment they have little incentive to offer a lower price in the US, do they?