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Originally Posted by Sly
So you are saying that if a particular pill costs $10 in the United States, it still costs $10 in let's say Germany even if the consumer buys it for one dollar... the German government just pays for the other 9 dollars?
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In Cuba, that is the case. That is the government buys the drug for some market price and then sells it to it's citizens for pennies.
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Originally Posted by chupachups
Yes I believe that would be the case most of the times. I would pay the regular price, whatever price f.ex Merck has set on my medicine in this local market, up to a government specified level, and then my spendings would be subsidized.
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No exactly, Brazil in particular has threaten to make it's own HIV drugs, and does so under special patents from the drug companies.
The WTO's 146 member countries reached an agreement back in August of 2003, allowing impoverished nations to bypass big pharmaceutical companies and import copied patented medicines to fight killer diseases.
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The agreement opened a huge potential new market by allowing generic drug makers to export drugs still under patent protection to treat diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria when needy countries declare they can't afford prices charged by multinational pharmaceutical corporations.
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Read more about it here:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...articleid=1338
This is one of the reasons, why the whole debate occured several years back, as to Canadian Drugs being cheaper, and that they weren't as potent as the american counter part.