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If you force a company to cut the price of a drug you're sending a message to this and other drug companies - 'think carefully before you decide to embark on new research; the development of this promising product may not be in your employees'/shareholders' interests and you're not a charity'.

I guess you're not considering forcing a drug company to manufacture a drug but where does this application of force end? Many would dispute that the examples you quote are net positive.

You may know that NICE is a UK National Health Service committee that regularly votes out expensive drugs where cost/benefit analysis indicates that they cost too much. If they do then patients can pay privately (but I believe the drug would not be administered by the NHS - you have to pay for a re-diagnosis) or (as in reported cases) die. What is a life worth? Depends but it certainly has a fairly modest price attached to it much though we don't like to admit it.

2 comments

You're arguing market forces and I mentioned that in my post. The parent argues using moral and I don't think that there's a moral argument to be made.

I'm very careful when people try and argue using market forces since the market in pharmaceuticals is heavily regulated anyways. There's a lot of examples where market forces go against the greater good of the community and the pharma market is a prime example. It's a common occurrence that drugs get modified slightly and then resubmitted to extend the patent period and the modification does not make the drug statistically significantly more effective. This is in line with market forces - it's in the interest of the company and the shareholders, but it's completely opposed to the interest of the community and to the idea of the patent system (your monopoly ran out, your research cost have been paid back). Should the government step in or let the market forces rule?

I think you're looking at NICE the wrong way - the monetary value of a human life is not arbitrary, it is measured in terms of other lives. It is arguably unethical to spend millions of pounds to save one person's life, when that same million pounds could have saved 10 other people, or more. On the other hand, the whole point of socialised medicine is the guarantee that society will go out of its way for you in your time of need. Balancing utilitarian ethics and socialist ethics is the essential but unenviable job of NICE.

As for forcing companies to sell life-saving drugs at reasonable cost, I'm all for it, but it seems to me to be a major problem that such vital societal functions as advancing the medical state of the art are left to organisational structures that exist in a landscape where ethics and altruism are highly selected against.