Part three of a three-part series.
In countries where healthcare is socialized, such as Italy and the United Kingdom, government responses ti COVID-19 have been underwhelming and politically charged.
“Some 4,032 have died in Italy, more than in China, with 627 Italian deaths reported Friday (March 20) — the highest daily toll for any country so far,” according to The Wall Street Journal. 
Which brings us back to the United States, where many Americans believe we would be better off with a socialized healthcare system. After all, many other countries have socialized medicine.
Some believe we should have price controls on drugs. Others believe that drug companies should not make profits and should make life-saving drugs available at no cost.
That belief would lead to no more life-savings drugs being developed, because there would be no incentive for companies to do so. Even if companies wanted to be able to give away free drugs, doing so would quickly put them out of business. Jobs would be eliminated and their stock would become worthless.
On average, it takes 10 years to develop a new drug. The average cost to develop a new drug is $2.6 billion. Post-approval research and development costs, such as the cost of monitoring effectiveness and safety, average $312 million and boost the total cost for each approved drug to almost $3 billion.
The median per-drug R&D spending of the eight companies that have developed more than six drugs is $5.8 billion.
Most drugs never make it to market. Only about 12% of drugs that enter clinical testing are eventually approved for public use.
Some drug companies have made a great deal of money. Some have taken advantage of the drug-approval process and charged outrageous prices for their products. Some drugs sell for more than $100,000 a year.
We’ve all heard about companies like Theranos, which achieved a valuation of $9 billion based on fraudulent blood-testing technology, or Mylan’s price gouging for its EpiPen. Companies in any industry that take advantage of your customers usually pay in the end, but in such cases, government involvement is necessary.
Regardless, even with no vaccine yet available, special interest groups that pretend that their interest is our interest are calling for President Trump to prohibit “profiteering” by Big Pharma during the coronavirus pandemic.
If Big Pharma makes a profit while developing a vaccine for coronavirus, they deserve to make a profit on it. If they’re saving lives, are there any other sectors more deserving of a profit? While small businesses are suffering most during the pandemic, large companies have also had to deal with major losses, a huge drop in their stock price and mounting expenses in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.
In 1900, 37% of all American deaths were from infectious diseases, George Will wrote. Today the figure is 2%.
I’d rather the drug companies get a cut of my hard-earned money than the more than 70 groups that are trying to stop them from earning a profit. To my knowledge, none of the 70 groups has criticized China President Xi Jinping.