Bernie Sanders just traveled to Canada with diabetes patients to purchase affordable insulin: “Americans are paying $300 for insulin. In Canada they can purchase it for $30. We are going to end pharma’s greed.”

Bottom line: America subsidizes the rest of the world's drugs. It's less about telling Big Pharma to "stop being greedy" than about telling the rest of the world to stop making Americans subsidize their medicine.

This seems an over-simplified statement.

My employer developped an expensive but cutting edge treatment. The way I see our market share evolving is

- Phase 1 : Clinical research is done in cooperation with a few research hospital funded by the taxpayer (even in the U.S.) In countries with top healthcare facilities so U.S., France, Germany

- Phase 2 : Private American hospital enter the dancefloor and start offering our treatment, even though insurance don't play the game. At the same time European government, start to allow a few national-reference center to prescribe our treatment only in a first option failed

- Phase 3 : Public and Private insurance still don't cover unless a small but increasing list of cases. Private American hospital working for us realize they loose money with us (the number of patient able to say I don't care if insurance don't cover I want the best treatment is limited) so we loose customer in the U.S. while having a slow growth in countries with public healthcare

- Phase 4 : Finally, long-term studies come out showing that the survival rate over 10/15 years is better and we start to reach the critical mass to reduce manufacturing costs : Insurance start to cover.

As you see from my perception, the U.S. aren't subsidizing our research more than other countries

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