Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices
latimes.comAnother casualty of our idiotic patent laws meeting our idiotic health care laws. Every single law is designed to improve profits at the cost of lives and in America, most people are totally ok with that despite what the article claims. Then they justify it by saying that we wouldn't have companies to make drugs if we forced them to have reasonable prices. Our idiot legislators really think that you can get rid of drug dealers by keeping prices high? I cannot imagine such just cruelty and hate driven by greed. If the patent program ended tomorrow or was severely reduced in scope (duration of patent), we'd have so much competition (and therefore affordable prices) in this space, it'd start to overshadow our current tech explosion. If we allow Medicare to negotiate prices, we'd have much more affordable prices.
The judicial death penalty we impose on criminals might be defendable ethically, but the death penalty we impose on our own citizens due to greed and cruelty is indefensible, cruel, and monstrous. Just so a few beyond-rich people can get even richer. Disgusting.
Step 1: Ban direct to consumer marketing.
Step 2: Ban doctor kickbacks including "educational seminars" in the Caribbean.
Step 3: Join the rest of the western world and establish a single payer system.
Some of the existing dysfunctional drug market dynamics can be addressed through a break up of the vertical integration: companies can choose to be the R&D/manufacturer in which case they are not allowed to market to doctors/consumers; or they can choose to be a marketer/distributor. Manufacturers must treat marketers non-discriminatorily.
This way we can separate the wheat from the chaff. Truly revolutionary products can still charge high patent-protected prices by their exclusive manufacturers. OTOH marketing driven products with weak perceived advantages won't be able to charge the high prices as they do now. In the Epi-pen case, the patent owner will still be the exclusive manufacturer. But if they raise the price by 400% to all the marketers the marketers may choose to promote other generic products instead.
Epipen is a patneted standard. It's akin to patenting HTTP and the pretending we could all switch if we want.
Under my scenario of separation of the marketing and the manufacturing entities, there would be much less incentive to create such a monopolized standard in the first place. The marketers would worry about getting into a jam like this. On the other hand if the invention is truly essential, they would have no choice.
Californians (including me) who have not looked at November initiatives yet - this article mentions the Drug Price Relief Act which seems to be https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_61,_Drug_Pric...
> A "yes" vote supports regulating drug prices by requiring state agencies to pay the same prices that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (USDVA) pays for prescription drugs.
Advocacy site: http://yeson61.com/
We need to find a way to decrease the time and cost of introducing new drugs to market so we can disarm the argument these drug companies have about needing insane profits to fund research.
Adrenaline was synthesized over 100 years ago.
Most of Mylan's drug portfolio has come from acquisitions of other companies. They sell branded drugs that have been synthesized years ago by other people.
The only R&D this company is doing is who to bribe in Congress and how to extort more money from the American public. True free markets at work.
> Most of Mylan's drug portfolio has come from acquisitions of other companies
You say this like they aren't doing R&D. But the industry has just broken up into two sub-industries: the big firms who specialize in large-scale distribution, and the small firms who mostly die but some create the new successful drugs, and then get acquired.
You could already disarm that argument by looking at the numbers. Pharmaceuticals as a whole are one of the most profitable industries and their spending on R&D as a percentage is not that high. They spend much more on marketing.
> They spend much more on marketing.
This is my pet peeve. If you are going to regurgitate a talking point, please regurgitate the _right_ talking point. They spend more on marketing and administration. You know, useless stuff like HR, IT, etc. What company need stupid stuff like that?
If you're going to make this complaint you should show how much companies spend on admin costs. Clearly the parent comment was making the point that they dislike that some [1] companies spend double on marketing than they do on R&D. I'm sure they also spend money on other essential services (they probably by pens), that's not all that illuminating unless you say how much. 1.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
People may be surprised, but drugs, even really good drugs, need to do some marketing. You can argue over what level of marketing is appropriate, but if you had a great drug and didn't do marketing, you'd take a huge hit to revenue.
Also, pharma marketing is very human resource heavy. You need to hire reps to visit offices. That's not cheap.
I have bought thousands of products in my life, without needing a door to door Saleswoman. Why is pharma special?
I would argue that the amount and detail of information you need to make a decision about a drug is an order of magnitude more than any consumer purchase.
Also, doctor might be prescribing hundreds of different drugs each year and just don't have the time to keep upon the latest and greatest.
I've talked to a handful of doctors who actually appreciate their sales rep. That usually happen when the rep tones down the sales routine and focuses more on helping the doctor do their job.
My understanding is that they have a huge sales force that sells directly to doctors which then also requires a lot of admin.
In any case I hope we can agree that they are highly profitable and could afford to spend more on R&D if they viewed it as worthwhile.
America's prices are a subsidy for the rest of the world, whom relies on American medications that they often outright infringe ownership of.
Say what you want about America, but it can't be denied that the majority of drugs in the last few decades which the world depends on has been thanks to the American government, American companies, and the American people.
One way to fix the price would be simply to stop giving away our inventions for pennies, and get the rest of the world's governments to actually pay a fair price if they want to use our products.
Since a significant number of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are not American (http://blog.proclinical.com/who-are-the-top-10-pharmaceutica...), I find this statement dubious to begin with. And since pharma companies spend more on marketing than they spend on R&D (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...) I also doubt that research costs are as high as people claim.
It is much more likely that, given our largely unregulated market for medicine, the market is pricing medicines in this country as expected by theory: as high as the market will bear. No ethics or morals apply, just pure profit. Whether that is OK or not depends on whether you happen to critically need those medicines and can afford them.
Other countries are allowed to negotiate the price of drugs and/or restraint profits made, so their prices for the same drugs are often significantly lower. Companies in those countries still make a profit, just less than here.
> Since a significant number of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are not American
Those foreign companies sell to Americans using American IP law.
> I find this statement dubious to begin with. And since pharma companies spend more on marketing than they spend on R&D
This is irrelevant. You can't draw any conclusions from the fact that I spend more on taxes than on housing.
> Companies in those countries still make a profit, just less than here.
Not everyone can be the marginal customer.
Seriously?
1- I was not the one claiming that the rest of the world is ripping off American drug companies.
2- the (obvious) point is that R&D isn't the major cost expense that was being posited in the original post. If cost of developing new drugs was inline with what the original post claimed, then you'd find both pharmaceutical companies profits being lower and fraction of expenses spent on R&D higher. Facts show otherwise, so primary cost of successfully doing business in pharma isn't drug development.
3- who said anything about marginal? Profit is profit. What we are discussing is the ethically justifiable profit rate. Pharma is one of the most profitable industrial segment in the US, with approx 20% net rate of return. As per the original article and related news stories show, these pharma companies are pricing many life saving drugs beyond what many can afford. At what rate of return is the pricing of life saving medicines no longer ethical? Please take into account that this is discussing how many people will be killed to protect/improve profits.
3. The problem is, if you say that Pharma profits s/b illegal, the companies will simply stop risking money on figuring out new treatments. The European governments ride their high horses and refuse to pay a fair price for private pharm company inventions, BUT they also refuse to make meaningful contributions themselves - which is WHY there's such a huge private pharma industry in the first place.
> Seriously?
Yes, seriously. I get that you are smart, but there are smart people in the world with different outlooks than yours.
> 1- I was not the one claiming that the rest of the world is ripping off American drug companies.
You brought up foreign drug companies, as if their existence proves American IP laws aren't needed for drug development. The reality is that the biggest market is America. Roche is a Swiss company but America makes up nearly half of its revenue, way more than Europe, despite Europe being larger on PPP measures and its own home country. You can't write off America and say that other countries will still invent drugs, because they are inventing drugs on the basis of American laws.
> - the (obvious) point is that R&D isn't the major cost expense
It is indeed a major expense, one of many. If a company spends more on taxes than on personnel it doesn't mean personnel aren't extremely important.
> who said anything about marginal?
Me. And you when you said that pharma companies were still profitable selling in other countries.
Obviously the companies are profitable in other countries, in the sense that they are not losing money on each sale. It doesn't follow that they could make money if every country compensated them as if they were the marginal customer.
An airline will sell me a seat at the last minute for $40 rather than let it go empty. That doesn't mean that they are cheating people who paid $400 when booking months ago, or that there is a way of operating the airline by selling $40 seats to everyone and we only need to get tough with our airline companies to force nirvana to happen.
Please take into account that this is discussing how many people will be killed to protect/improve profits.
Emotional language like this used to work on me. But since I am no longer in middle school, it doesn't. Sorry.
Adults recognize that life and death decisions are made every day based on money. All procedures and drugs have some break-even point. Doctors can retire instead of putting in more years because they are done. All sane medical systems have a threshold at which it no longer becomes worthwhile to do a medical procedure even if necessary to save someone's life.
If you are going to whinge about "what is ethical," let's point out that no one is stopping you from discovering the next great wonder drug. No one. Go do it. And give it away. Or whatever you want. No one is stopping you from doing this. Oh, you don't want to do that? It's much easier to instead tell the people who actually do the life-saving work how to run their lives? Well, okay, I guess that is easier.
You can't yank out the rug from underneath the pharma industry and just assume that it will continue to deliver results. If you want to think you are being "ethical," then stop messing with a system that is continually adding things to the public store of knowledge when you don't know what you are doing. The drugs going off-patent each year are amazing. I have family members who would not be functional without some of these drugs. If some pinhead had decided 40 years ago to put a spoke into the industry's wheels because they didn't like the word "profit" these generics might not be available.
This argument would hold more weight if the pharmaceutical sector didn't have 17% profit margins. Only beaten by Banks, Financial Services, Shipbuilding, and Tobacco. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/...
Also pharmaceutical spending on R&D is much lower than many other industries.
Bullshit. Insulin was developed in Canada. Viagra was developed in the UK. Sure, 50% of the worlds pharma is developed in the US (as of 2010, it hovered between 30-40% until then), but most of the stuff people need has already been developed. So no, the majority of drugs that people use have not been developed by the American government.
The motivation for this article is the Epi-pen, so let's look at that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine_autoinjector
Made in Good Old USA, based of USA Army prototypes.
"But she also acknowledged that high retail prices of EpiPens in the United States effectively subsidize the cost of the devices when they are sold in Europe, at just $100 or $150. Many of the countries there have government-run health-care systems that limit drug prices charged by manufacturers, unlike the U.S."
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/25/mylan-expands-epipen-cost-cut...
Oh, look at that, looks like the rest of the world -is- taking advantage.
Or the rest of the world pays a marketable price,and USA pays windfall profit and executive income.
Nice way to quote the CEO "acknowledging" a propaganda claim, without attributing the source
There are generic Epi-pens, which are much, much cheaper. You -do not- have to buy the name brand. Non-issue made big by the media and anti-capitalist hordes expecting more free stuff.
There is no generic of the Epi-Pens. There's other treatments similar to the epi-pen but if you have prescription to an epi-pen, there is no generic that pharmacist can change it out for.
Is this true? See the first Google link:
Parent comment's being sloppy. Parent meant to say that there are generic EpiPen alternatives (epinephrine + delivery system) but there isn't a generic EpiPen (name brand delivery system). Mylan claims that EpiPen (injector) has superior features and is easier to use.
Here's the relevant quote from the article you linked:
"The patents that currently prevent a generic form of EpiPen are on the injector device itself, not the medicine inside. So, while you can’t get a generic EpiPen, there are alternatives that use epinephrine."Yeah, Sigma and many other companies sell grams of epinephrine for ~$50. The expensive part is getting it in your body.
Actually, the EpiPen only injects 0.3 mg. Or around 0.4 cents worth of epinephrine if you could intake what Sigma is selling.
EDIT: I think I was off by a decimal place... Anyway, the epinephrine is more or less free. Just paying for the device.
I think people often try to avoid the generic version because teachers and counselors and others tend to be trained specifically with Epi-pens. You don't want people to be reading instructions when you need help.