by thundara 416 days ago · link · parent · post: Broccoli and Bad Faith
I was discussing this with a friend and his thought was that if the government provided its own option to citizens, at a cost, it might be more acceptable.
I forget if it was discussed on here or somewhere else, but the reason the costs of pills are lower in other countries is that the single-payer gives the government a lot of leverage in bargaining with pharmaceutical companies to decide their prices. Medicare has a similar power, too a lesser extent, too, but the increased fragmentation of the insured population in the US lowers each's bargaining power.
by mk 416 days ago · link
Ironically, Bush's Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act prohibited the Federal government from negotiating prices for prescription drugs. My guess is that he did it for that very reason. The negotiating power of the government would precipitously drop drug prices, and folks might get the idea that public healthcare isn't such a bad thing.