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Bill Alstrom (MA/Maine/MA)'s avatar

Excellent post. Americans are fools. We are exceptionally good at shooting ourselves in the foot. Maybe by the time we are as old as Europe - when we grow up - we'll "get it".

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Betty Carlson's avatar

This article helped me better understand something I always find shocking, but have trouble getting my head around. Thank you!

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Gloria J. Maloney's avatar

Thank you! In my newsletter yesterday, I tried to explain what pharmacy benefit managers do and that other countries' governments negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. You did a much better job of it. We need a single-payer universal system in the U.S. that works for us. I restacked and will share. Facebook somehow blocked me from sharing "I would rather have healthcare" when I tried to share it there.

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John Howard's avatar

Thanks Gloria. It's not clear to me that people in the U.S. realise the extraordinary extent to which government leaders and regulators are complicit in enabling extraordinarily excessive drug prices (and corporate profits); that's why I wanted to highlight some comparable prices as well as the way systems elsewhere work.

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John Howard's avatar

There is a substantial scholarly literature on this subject for those who wish to drill deeper into it. Follow this link to PubMed for a list: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=drug+prices+france

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