boylermaker
Senior Member
The thing with drugs is that they are (mostly) monopolies, at least in the United States. So if your company has the patent on Xenocibatab, nobody else can compete with you by selling Xenocibatab at a lower price. So we would expect that companies charge whatever the most they can get away with is in any given country. My guess would be that government-run health care systems in Europe are better able to set prices than occurs in the US, since they control more of the market share (and I think can just set prices by statute, no?). As long as your pill costs less than $100 to make, you might as well sell it in Italy for $100 if you don't have any other choice.
But, shipping isn't a monopoly. There are multiple shipping companies that compete with each other. I can ship to England via Fedex or via UPS or even via USPS. So we don't expect that companies set their prices at "whatever we can get away with", they have to price them at "whatever we can get away with without being so much more expensive than our competitors that nobody uses our product". That puts downward pressure on prices that should make them about equal in Europe and the US, assuming that supply and demand are equal.
Now, maybe I'm totally wrong about that, and shipping prices from Europe are set by government fiat in Europe, the same way drug prices are. I've never heard of that, but sure, why not? Of course, it begs the question of why European governments fix shipping-prices-from-Europe to be artificially low but not shipping-prices-to-Europe. Is it a form of cryptic tariff, perhaps? That's why I brought up the question.
But, shipping isn't a monopoly. There are multiple shipping companies that compete with each other. I can ship to England via Fedex or via UPS or even via USPS. So we don't expect that companies set their prices at "whatever we can get away with", they have to price them at "whatever we can get away with without being so much more expensive than our competitors that nobody uses our product". That puts downward pressure on prices that should make them about equal in Europe and the US, assuming that supply and demand are equal.
Now, maybe I'm totally wrong about that, and shipping prices from Europe are set by government fiat in Europe, the same way drug prices are. I've never heard of that, but sure, why not? Of course, it begs the question of why European governments fix shipping-prices-from-Europe to be artificially low but not shipping-prices-to-Europe. Is it a form of cryptic tariff, perhaps? That's why I brought up the question.