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Guest : <font color='#000000'>Pam, I think we need to set up a barter your drugs for our audio gear.</font>
<font color='#000000'>Hi Dan S
About the barter, we have already given considering that a lot of drugs were developped in Canada (especially Montreal) because the salary of MD are lower (150K to 400K) so the cost of research are lower. From the time we have discovered insulin till 3TC (part of the tri-therapy) we have given to the drug world for a few decades.
Cost of drugs are high because of higher cost of markerting (more than double than the cost of developping the drugs). Marketing must be more expensive in US!
Actually developping drugs in North America will probably stop as there is a lot of doctor/biologist available in India. All the people working in the Drug companies in North America will probably have to live with competition from India (like IT people, accoutant, call centers).
What is interesting is this will lower the cost of phamaceuticals (therefore lowering the price of Drugs in US) but most of it will go in the pocket of the companies not the customers.
Something else, in a world with 1% interest rate and inflation under control (for more than 10 years), investors are still expecting minimum 15%-20% Return On Investment like in the 80's. This is part of the reason we pay too much for our audio/video gear and that you pay too much for your drugs: greed.
BTW, do you know what is the worst inflation for the stock market: salary going up! Interesting this attitude coming from people who wants 15% ROI with 2% inflation.
We are all in the same boat, Canadian and American alike. We only have differences in Foreign policy (we have no army and we are more humble) but internally we are facing the same challenge.
We need that your drugs comes down and our Audio/Video gear also comes down.</font>