Avoiding pharma dependence on China

Research-intensive pharmaceutical companies have also warned that low prices paid by European health systems are driving new drug discovery efforts to the US and China.

China.  Here is the FT source, with plenty of interesting additional information.  It is a common charge that libertarians or classical liberals had no suggested remedy for the growing U.S. dependence on China in biomedical supply chains.  But of course we did.  Many of us have been saying, for many years, that Europe should be paying much higher prices for pharma contracts.  That in turn would have allowed more pharma production to have remained with our European allies, to our benefit and theirs.  We also have been wanting to make it much easier to build and maintain pharma factories in the United States.  Here is o3 on all the legal and regulatory obstacles to building pharma plants in the United States.

As a good rule of thumb, when someone says “group X never has dealt with problem Y,” usually it is wrong.  (One possible remedy here is to do an o3 search.)  A corollary principle is when someone says “Tyler Cowen never has dealt with problem Y” that usually is wrong too.