Trump Wants Drug Makers, Insurers, & Hospitals To Disclose Prices!

[Belsnickel]

(02-13-2019, 01:24 AM)Vas Deferens Wrote: Considering the amount of R&D done at public universities, seems like we already are.

Do you know who funds the research, though? Just because it's a public university doesn't mean the research is publicly funded.

[Belsnickel]

(02-13-2019, 12:27 AM)Benton Wrote: My only concern there is then it's cure by committee. Common sense and government priorities don't always go hand in hand.

That is what makes it difficult. However, just because the government increases their investment in scientific research doesn't mean that private investment dries up.

[*bfine32*]

I think we can all agree this is a good thing.

Now, how can we make this a divisive issue.......................I got it!!

[fredtoast]

(02-13-2019, 10:56 AM)bfine32 Wrote: I think we can all agree this is a good thing.

Now, how can we make this a divisive issue.......................I got it!!

So you agree that the government should be allowed to control the price of medication instead of the free marketmarket?

[Vas Deferens]

(02-13-2019, 09:25 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Do you know who funds the research, though? Just because it's a public university doesn't mean the research is publicly funded.

No doubt pharma and/or VC's fund some of the research, but they still slide a large chuck of the bill across the table to the public.  Facilities, student tuition, pensions,....  Seems like they are making out like bandits to me.  

 

[*bfine32*]

(02-13-2019, 11:36 AM)fredtoast Wrote: So you agree that the government should be allowed to control the price of medication instead of the free marketmarket?

Nope. 

But they should be required to release their costs (the title of the OP) and enable free competition. 

[*michaelsean*]

(02-13-2019, 11:41 AM)Vas Deferens Wrote: No doubt pharma and/or VC's fund some of the research, but they still slide a large chuck of the bill across the table to the public.  Facilities, student tuition, pensions,....  Seems like they are making out like bandits to me.  

 

Once the government has picked up some of the cost of R&D then I have no problem regulating the price.  Fund your own shit.

[Belsnickel]

(02-13-2019, 11:41 AM)Vas Deferens Wrote: No doubt pharma and/or VC's fund some of the research, but they still slide a large chuck of the bill across the table to the public.  Facilities, student tuition, pensions,....  Seems like they are making out like bandits to me.  

As an accountant for a public institution I can say that's not how it tends to work. If a professor has grant funded research, they have to separate that from their teaching gig. We have professors with separate computers in their offices for their research. As for facilities, have you ever noticed these big research institutions with buildings and wings named after individuals or organizations? Yeah, there is a reason for that.

Grant funded positions and projects don't receive funds from tuition, they often have to rent space in a facility if it is publicly funded, it's just a whole different thing. I deal with internal controls, so I have to look at how departments are safeguarding university (public) assets and that they are not intermingling with grant sponsored programs.

[fredtoast]

(02-13-2019, 11:53 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Nope. 

But they should be required to release their costs (the title of the OP) and enable free competition. 

Listing prices won't help much.

You can't price shop for much of your health care because you have to go to a health care provider before you even know what you need to shop for.  You can't get a quote from a doctor on the price to fix something like "a pain in my side".

People are already free to price shop for their prescriptions, but I don't know anyone who does.  Instead everyone I know has one pharmacy they use for all their prescriptions.

[Vas Deferens]

(02-13-2019, 01:17 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: As an accountant for a public institution I can say that's not how it tends to work. If a professor has grant funded research, they have to separate that from their teaching gig. We have professors with separate computers in their offices for their research. As for facilities, have you ever noticed these big research institutions with buildings and wings named after individuals or organizations? Yeah, there is a reason for that.

Grant funded positions and projects don't receive funds from tuition, they often have to rent space in a facility if it is publicly funded, it's just a whole different thing. I deal with internal controls, so I have to look at how departments are safeguarding university (public) assets and that they are not intermingling with grant sponsored programs.

Appreciate your insight and perspective here.  You are clearly more qualified than I to speak on the topic and I'm glad to hear there is a framework in place to curb abuse.  I only have second hand knowledge from a friend who worked, as an undergraduate, on pharma R&D projects at a prestigious public university.  His view was that the 'funding' often didn't come close to the profits of initial and ancillary products developed.  This same individual later went on to work on similar projects at an even more prestigious PRIVATE university where he believed the transaction was more balanced because of equity retained by the institution in their R&D efforts.

To that end, I'm quite certain these companies would not structure their investments as such unless it came out in their favor.  I would personally prefer our public universities receive more funding for R&D that helps the greater good in the first place.  But that would require our politicians acknowledge the geologic record and the existence of math.  Flying spaghetti monsters can't play in that realm.  

Question for you since you may have your bankers visor on.  Do you happen to know how grants from companies to public institutions are inevitably booked?  Wouldn't doubt if costs associated for these programs / facilities end up getting written off as charitable donations, making them even sexier.

[Benton]

(02-13-2019, 09:26 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: That is what makes it difficult. However, just because the government increases their investment in scientific research doesn't mean that private investment dries up.

There won't be as much private investment if there isn't profit (patents). That money will go to other gambles. 

If patents continue, then we're just subsiding one more industry. Taxpayers will pay for research, drug companies will cash in on that. In theory prices will go down because more companies will be creating the same drugs.

In theory.

That same theory has the price of most things you buy going up year after year despite reduced costs, more subsidies, and relatively stagnant wages. Hell, look at the auto industry. 

Until there's some kind of price control or massive negotiations on behalf of consumers, prices on drugs will keep rising.

[Belsnickel]

(02-13-2019, 04:18 PM)Vas Deferens Wrote: Question for you since you may have your bankers visor on.  Do you happen to know how grants from companies to public institutions are inevitably booked?  Wouldn't doubt if costs associated for these programs / facilities end up getting written off as charitable donations, making them even sexier.

So for a company or organization that is giving a grant, that all depends on the company and how the grants are written up. You could have some that are written off as charitable donations, but some will fall under R&D expenses (which really get capitalized in the costs for whatever you're working on, but that's a looooooonnnnnnnggggggg and boring discussion). There are so many ins and outs on that it can make your head spin, and my days of looking at FASB are behind me.

Really, the side I know most is from the university side and the way those sorts of funds are distinguished from others. Government, or fund accounting is trying to safeguard the public's assets. While there are some similarities to accounting in the private sector, the focus is much different.

[Dill]

(02-13-2019, 04:27 PM)Benton Wrote: There won't be as much private investment if there isn't profit (patents). That money will go to other gambles. 

If patents continue, then we're just subsiding one more industry. Taxpayers will pay for research, drug companies will cash in on that. In theory prices will go down because more companies will be creating the same drugs.

In theory.

That same theory has the price of most things you buy going up year after year despite reduced costs, more subsidies, and relatively stagnant wages. Hell, look at the auto industry. 

Until there's some kind of price control or massive negotiations on behalf of consumers, prices on drugs will keep rising.

In theory there used to be a division of labor here too, in which taxpayer funding was more clearly demarcated.

The government and universities funded and carried out basic research, the kind that either produces no profit or only would over long term. Corporations generally aren't interested in that, often the government isn't either--so basic research programs, like those into climate change, are precariously funded (in contrast to military research). In both cases, public money, in theory redounded to the public good.

Before 1980, non-profit universities were forbidden to profit from patents or research. The results of such research were ideally to become general knowledge, accessible to all. If universities received federal funding, any patents or inventions resulting therefrom went to the government.

The Bayh-Dole Act (1980) changed all that, allowing universities to own their own patents/inventions and to profit from them. That began the drive of private corporations to invest in universities, and universities seeking corporate funding, blurring the boundary between private and public, profit and non-profit.  In exchange for funding, universities could agree to grant any patents or inventions resulting therefrom to the corporate donor. Thus, corporations did not have to build or update their own labs, so major costs of research could be socialized (in the case of public universities) while profits were privatized.  Further, corporations, especially Big Pharm, could stipulate that research based upon their funding had to include their products. (So Vas is quite right to smell a rat here.)

Reductions in funding of state universities over the last three decades has exacerbated the problem, as neoliberal minded state legislatures seek to "divest" their states of such public expenditures, driving universities to more actively seek other funding sources and themselves adopt profit oriented "business models" of university management.

This confusion between profit and non-profit has been a problem for a long time.  Other factors complicate the picture too, like Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) that combine federal money and direction with corporate resources to produce research entities whose product is controlled by the government while operating outside restrictions and bureaucracy trammeling other government institutions. Sometimes these, and similar university-corporate entities, can separate from their parents and establish themselves as private and for profit.  So publicly funded research sets up a private profit center with no recompense.

[Belsnickel]

(02-13-2019, 07:40 PM)Dill Wrote: [lots of good info I just didn't feel like copying]

One of the nice things for me is that I don't have to deal with much of this at all. We aren't a research university, so the donors/grants we deal with are piddly compared to what the larger research institutions deal with. We have a statewide meeting of finance folks twice a year for the various state schools. My counterparts at UVA, VT, VCU, and GMU have some real bullshit to deal with and hearing them talk about it makes me glad we aren't them.

[Dill]

(02-13-2019, 07:55 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: One of the nice things for me is that I don't have to deal with much of this at all. We aren't a research university, so the donors/grants we deal with are piddly compared to what the larger research institutions deal with. We have a statewide meeting of finance folks twice a year for the various state schools. My counterparts at UVA, VT, VCU, and GMU have some real bullshit to deal with and hearing them talk about it makes me glad we aren't them.

LOL good points.  VT and GMU I am familiar with, especially GMU.  Think of GMU's recently named--and Koch donor stipulated--Antonin Scalia School of law, which also stipulates conditions for hiring and firing of professors, thus tilting control of that legal/research developmental prerogative away from faculty and towards the Koch Foundation. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html

[Benton]

@TheRealDill

Good info there. I wasn't aware about the act. I just assumed universities always could.

The older I get, the more I think we need to repeal any law passed after about 1975. Maybe 1970.

[CJD]

Donald Trump is such an odd creature.

He acts like he doesn't want the Government controlling any part of industry (because that would be socialist!) but then he keeps calling on industries to do what he wants.
First he threatened to cut all subsidies to GM because they decided it was not financially viable to keep one of their sites open.
Now he wants to force drug companies to disclose their costs, as a pseudo-check on their pricing policies.

Does he want the Government to influence and/or control industry or not? He flip flops on this more than any Republican should be comfortable with.

[Dill]

(02-13-2019, 08:32 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Donald Trump is such an odd creature.

He acts like he doesn't want the Government controlling any part of industry (because that would be socialist!) but then he keeps calling on industries to do what he wants.
First he threatened to cut all subsidies to GM because they decided it was not financially viable to keep one of their sites open.
Now he wants to force drug companies to disclose their costs, as a pseudo-check on their pricing policies.

Does he want the Government to influence and/or control industry or not? He flip flops on this more than any Republican should be comfortable with.

There may be more method to that madness than first appears. At least in some cases.

President Trump And Allies Push To Save A Very Specific Coal Plant
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693966847/president-trump-and-allies-push-to-save-a-very-specific-coal-plant

In his latest effort to boost the coal business — and in the process help a major supporter — President Trump has called on the Tennessee Valley Authority to, essentially, ignore the advice of its staff and keep a large coal-fired power plant operating.

The move has drawn extra scrutiny because that plant buys coal from a company headed by a large campaign donor to Trump, Murray Energy Corp. Chairman, President and CEO Robert Murray.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(02-13-2019, 08:32 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Donald Trump is such an odd creature.

He acts like he doesn't want the Government controlling any part of industry (because that would be socialist!) but then he keeps calling on industries to do what he wants.
First he threatened to cut all subsidies to GM because they decided it was not financially viable to keep one of their sites open.
Now he wants to force drug companies to disclose their costs, as a pseudo-check on their pricing policies.

Does he want the Government to influence and/or control industry or not? He flip flops on this more than any Republican should be comfortable with.

Uhm.... Trump has wanted Socialized medical coverage for many years, and not a big surprise to me about the drug prices being controlled either.

[CJD]

(02-14-2019, 05:46 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Uhm.... Trump has wanted Socialized medical coverage for many years, and not a big surprise to me about the drug prices being controlled either.

So in his State of the Union, his fear mongering of the Socialist views of the new young Democrats was just pandering that he didn't believe in?