Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India
This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation.  Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that."  And what option does the pharmaceutical company have?  Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly.<p>Because healthcare payments are not functionally a government-controlled monopoly (ie. socialized healthcare) in the US, this doesn't happen.  So Novartis can sell Gleevec for $75,000 in the US, because a healthcare provider will agree to pay and just bill it to private insurance companies, and those private insurance company will agree to pay and just increase their premiums on the customers, who probably won't notice because, assuming they have employer-provided health insurance, their employer won't take anything more out of their paycheck, but then say increased operational costs means nobody can get a raise.<p>So US healthcare leads the way in innovation because device and pharmaceutical manufacturers can make a lot more money than in countries with socialized healthcare.  So these companies make most of their profits in the US, and then they'll grumble and accept lower prices in every other country, because at that point it's just icing to them.  After the profits made in the US, getting $2,500 from Indians for Gleevac is better than getting $0.<p>The US is effectively subsidizing advanced healthcare for every other country in the world.  This is pretty crappy, obviously, but this is a complex problem to solve.   Because if you move to a cost-controlling system, then you will stifle legitimate innovation.  Why jump through all our FDA clinical trial hurdles if there's no promise of a big payout at the end?  Why invest in R&D without the protections of patent law to prevent your drugs from being trivially replicated?<p>I'm not trying to say, "oh, those poor profits of the drug companies."  I recognize this may not be a sympathetic argument.  But it's likely to be tough to control costs and yet maintain R&D and innovation.  Right now, every other country essentially gets the US to pay the bill for the innovation and they reap the benefits at a lower cost, but with US healthcare already consuming 1/6 of our economy, this isn't sustainable.