Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Trump's latest lunacy
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2025 01:33:08 +1100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <vrh8vj$3e213$1@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 15:33:24 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="07aa65dcde25378969c3a17e69a9f204";
	logging-data="3606563"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+OKXAs+4I1y0XXudbShP5qJk0TG7GhvhM="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:n4lqsZkSeLWw183YYwrlmbQbsOg=
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
X-Antivirus: Norton (VPS 250320-8, 20/3/2025), Outbound message
Content-Language: en-US
Bytes: 3076

I may be being unfair here, but the latest claim amongst American who 
like Trump's tariffs is that the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits 
Scheme is a non-tariff barrier to trade. They may be the lunatics 
involved here rather than Trump himself.

The Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme buys medicines which have 
been approved as effective and cost-effective, and sells them on cheaply 
to patients whose doctors have prescribed the medicines.

It's no kind of barrier to trade - anybody who wants a particular drug 
can buy it directly from the manufacturer at a price they negotiate with 
manufacturer.

They won't have the buying power of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, 
which buys in much larger volumes, and employs people who know exactly 
what they are buying, and who the alternative suppliers are.

When I read the New Yorker I see ads for medicines aimed directly at 
consumers. I don't see them in periodicals aimed only at the Australian 
market, not because they are illegal, but because not enough people in 
Australia would act on such advertisements.

We all know that if a drug is safe and effective we will be able to get 
more cheaply through our doctors and the Australian Pharmaceutical 
Benefits Scheme.

There is a lively market for illegal drugs in Australia - tests on the 
outflow from our sewage systems demonstrate that a lot cocaine and other 
illegal drugs do get consumed here,

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/12/australia-drug-use-wastewater-testing-methamphetamine-increase

So the US pharmaceutical industry wants to operate with the same kind of 
freedom as illegal drug traffickers. They wouldn't sell as much - the 
Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme sell to patients at less than purchase 
cost, on the basis that curing patients is cheaper than treating them 
indefinitely, so we buy more than we would if individual patients had to 
pay the full cost - but they might be able to extort higher prices from 
patients who could afford to pay.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney