$136 Medical Drug Being Sold At $94,000 In The US & $300 (as generic) In India

[OverVolt]

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[OverVolt]

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[rudeguy]

Well as soon as I saw you guys taking the opportunity to complain about all drugs using Gileads Hep C cure drug which is a unique case, I correctly assumed you were all stupid. And I guess you standing up for the stupids, makes you the king of the stupids, or something. Which would make sense since your frontal lobe is shut down.

if you had pulled your head out of your ass for 2 minutes and read the thread you would have read the informed posts about this subject. Instead you decided the rest of the world is stupid and you are a genius, like usual. And like usual, you made an ass out of yourself.

 

[OverVolt]

if you had pulled your head out of your ass for 2 minutes and read the thread you would have read the informed posts about this subject. Instead you decided the rest of the world is stupid and you are a genius, like usual. And like usual, you made an ass out of yourself.

You should have have instantly ripped Newell a new one. That didn't happen.

The FDA is actually responsible for the higher drug prices, as is the transition from brand to generic drugs. Most of the problems are manufacturing problems.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278171/

This is basically the counter argument in a nutshell

Most drug shortages that occur in the U.S. involve generic medications.4,10 These shortages likely occur because manufacturers have little financial incentive to produce off-patent medications.1,9 At most, only a few manufacturers produce a particular generic drug, so shortages are inevitable.9 Shortages of drug classes containing mostly generic drugs, including anesthetics, antibiotics, and cancer treatments, have tripled since 2006.15 Companies may also decide to discontinue production of a trade-name drug once it comes off-patent, and the need to produce an additional product also strains the capacity of generic drug manufacturers.

 

[rudeguy]

You should have have instantly ripped Newell a new one. That didn't happen.

The FDA is actually responsible for the higher drug prices, as is the transition from brand to generic drugs. Most of the problems are manufacturing problems.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278171/

This is basically the counter argument in a nutshell

why do you keep editing out all your posts?

 

[JEDIYoda]

Actually in the United States my wifes medicine if she had to pay for the herself would cost out of pocket upwards of $1,500 --- $2,000 a month.
Those same drug in Poland --- would cost maybe out of pocket -- not even $100........go figure.
They are even cheaper in Israel....

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Yes.

If the price is too high and no one is buying (because they don't need it to not die from a horrid disease), you will adjust the price.

If the price is too high and people are buying it, someone else will come along and create a cheaper alternative - like or near it.

This is perfectly acceptable.

Your interests in the consumer are zero - you just want the most money from them - so, you have no good intentions towards them. And that is fine since they want (as opposed to need) to give their money to you for this product, so enjoy it.

Ok, so why is it ok for me to make 500% plus but not someone else who provides something others want/need?

Starting to see where this little exercise is going???

 

[BurnItDwn]

Problem is that these are not priced like commodities... its a real shame too.

 

[Darwin333]

This has little to do with free market capitalism. For starters we have a protected market for prescription drugs. This drug sells for 300 bucks in India. Try buying this drug in India and importing it here.

Second the govt is the primary payer for this drug. The price was negotiated by lobbyists. There are no supply\demand controls when the govt sets the price it is willing to pay for the drug. Chances are high if this was left to international trade pressure + out of pocket pricing. It would drastically lose its high price.

While technically illegal to import the drug I know a few people that do import their drugs from India. Whenever they get caught in customs the only thing that happens is they get a letter from customs (he called it a love letter) and the company reships his meds sometimes for free and sometimes for 1/2 the original price. One guy says he even orders valium, which is a scheduled drug, with the same results including just getting a letter if customs catches it. So as far as I know from anecdotal stories there aren't really any consequences to ordering RXs from India.

 

[Darwin333]

I'm torn. I see the work that's involved in research in both monetary and time costs. Coupled with some things simply being dead ends, I can see why drugs *could* cost a lot (but often times, it does seem to border on the absurd). At the same time, the amount of money spent on advertising to consumers and very ethically questionable marketing to doctors makes me think that perhaps they are spending money in the wrong places. And as long as investors keep demanding high returns, I doubt we'll see much of a change in drug pricing in the US without changes in the law and regulation.

I've never understood the entire monetary issue about what they spend on marketing. I DO agree with the ethical issue but what they spend, versus R&D which is often sited, on marketing has got to be a mostly profitable expense otherwise they wouldn't do it. I find it hard to bash a company for making an investment that generates more revenue than the initial investment, at least from a monetary standpoint.

 

[zinfamous]

The pricing might be a little on the high side in the US, but it's probably on the low side in India. If they didn't license it, the Indian government would probably just expropriate the patent and Gilead would be left with squat. Better a few bucks by licensing a generic than nothing.

I'd also like to point out to the nutter crowd that frequently appears in any thread about diseases and treatments and like to claim that drug companies only like "treatments" that this is a cure for hepatitis C.

It is also cheaper than the full course of the previous best treatment, which, if I recall, is generally ~40% effective?

This drug is rather unprecedented. Sure, you can distill the cost down to an alarming price per pill, but it is actually cheaper than the standard, far less effective treatment.

It's an endgame drug for Hep C.

I honestly have no problem with subsidizing treatments in the 3rd world. A powerful company like this, you look to prevent and eliminate disease in countries that are utterly devastated. Especially with an education and talent potential like India, you have a great opportunity to strengthen the world workforce, and economic power.

 

[Brainonska511]

Well, for NASA, they have a set goal and work on achieving that goal, often times problems arise and the solutions they find can be used by consumers. Does the NIH have a goal such as curing cancer? If not then it's not like NASA or what I was envisioning in my original post.

The NIH certainly has research goals, but a lot of them, at least at the top level, are going to be fairly broad brush. There are ~29 study sections (eg: one for infectious diseases, one for age-related research, one for cancer...) within the NIH that are each responsible for allocating grant money to individual researchers in a merit-based system. And between them and the rest of the NIH, they have to allocate roughly $30 billion (which outside of defense-funded research, is the largest chunk of the research money pie).

Each of these study sections has there only area of the biomedical field to focus on. Each of these groups is going to most likely have two sets of priorities - funding fundamental research (eg: "How does this protein work on a molecular level?") and more applied research (eg: "Based on some more basic research, we know that this type of cancer has these distinct characteristics. Can we make a diagnostic tool that detects one of these things in a noninvasive way?")

But in the end, there is a lot of back and forth between basic, fundamental research and more applied research. People might discover an inhibitor of a viral protein in drug screening and basic researchers might pick up on that for other reasons to explain how the inhibitor works (and then the reverse direction, other people might find ways to make the inhibitor better based on what the basic researchers found). But biomedical research is a big area (after all, there are a lot of problems, known and unknown, facing the US and the world population today), so we're not going to see the NIH say "We're going to cure cancer by 2021" or anything like that. People would laugh them out of the room. However, you will see other things, like the Human Genome Project or the BRAIN initiative - things to advance some specific areas of research that could have applications elsewhere.

I've never understood the entire monetary issue about what they spend on marketing. I DO agree with the ethical issue but what they spend, versus R&D which is often sited, on marketing has got to be a mostly profitable expense otherwise they wouldn't do it. I find it hard to bash a company for making an investment that generates more revenue than the initial investment, at least from a monetary standpoint.

Yes, from a monetary perspective, I do not blame drug companies for trying to improve the return on their investment. Since we don't ban the marketing, it only makes sense for them to do it.

 

[zinfamous]

why do you keep editing out all your posts?

that's been his MO the last month or so, with anything healthcare related.

I thought I was the only one that noticed.

 

[rudeguy]

that's been his MO the last month or so, with anything healthcare related.

I thought I was the only one that noticed.

I don't remember him being nuts before but now he's gone off the deep end.

 

[Fern]

Medicine is not the same as any old product or even service out there.

No one has a valid grievance on complaining over a bitching stereo system at $84K a pop. Fuck the whiners in that case - because you don't need such a stereo system.

We are talking about something that saves lives - and the price is not even determined by what it cost, but by how much money the makers want to rake in since people are desperate for it. That is exploitation.

You can charge whatever you want for an 'item'.

No one is complaining over what the price of a pen, car or even food is. Because you have plenty of alternatives, which as a consumer, you should know about and be capable of figuring out.

Especially for convenience and comfort items.

Honest question: I'm not a doctor etc, but there do appear to be alternatives. According to your article these drugs only appeared in Dec 2013.

The previous drugs, based on Ribavirin, appear to be far less expensive than the new one.

My question: Why not just take the less expensive alternative that people have been using for years and years?

Fern

 

[Fern]

Well there we go, now that we know what the problem is we can work on the solution. It should be pretty easy for a politician to tie funding for this into healthcare cost controls and other benefits for the public.

So who opposes more spending on this? (Group question)

Go look at what they've spending money on and you'll have your answer.

The NIH gets +$30 billion annually. Maybe they should start by spending more wisely.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidma...sages-for-rabbits-meditation-for-hot-flashes/

Fern

 

[Darwin333]

Shorter version of OP: I think _____ makes too much money doing _____ and I think he should only be allowed to make $______ instead.

Aren't you for less government spending? You do realize that the .gov is pretty much the only idiots that will be paying $80K for a drug that they could otherwise get for $300.

Like I said, we wonder why insurance costs so damn much.

 

[Strk]

It is also cheaper than the full course of the previous best treatment, which, if I recall, is generally ~40% effective?

This drug is rather unprecedented. Sure, you can distill the cost down to an alarming price per pill, but it is actually cheaper than the standard, far less effective treatment.

It's an endgame drug for Hep C.

I honestly have no problem with subsidizing treatments in the 3rd world. A powerful company like this, you look to prevent and eliminate disease in countries that are utterly devastated. Especially with an education and talent potential like India, you have a great opportunity to strengthen the world workforce, and economic power.

This case has several layers of crazy though. The drug was discovered by another company for well under a billion, but that company was bought by Gilead for $11 billion.

 

[Darwin333]

Ok, so why is it ok for me to make 500% plus but not someone else who provides something others want/need?

Starting to see where this little exercise is going???

I don't think we'd be talking about this right now if it was only 500%....

Oh yeah, that little thing about purchasing politicians to make it illegal to import the same drugs from other countries for cheaper so that they can continue charging us insane prices. Kinda takes the competition part out of the free market part that you are trying to argue...

 

[Pulsar]

/me wonders if Overvolt bothered to read the thread before sounding like an idiot.

Clearly not. And the correct response is evidently to attempt to delete your posts as quickly as possible so you don't look like a complete fool.

Someone should tell him it's too late.... and he's just making himself look even worse....

 

[soccerballtux]

I'm torn on this. on the one hand many drugs are worthless, a money dump. The occasional jackpot like this is what funds development.

Take a look at how much pharma innovation there is in the UK.

on the other hand, protecting the market for the sake of more drugs is interesting when there's a current life at stake.

 

[nickqt]

This is a complicated issue. Not all drugs are profitable, like antibiotics, because they are used for a short period of time, and then stopped. It's why antibiotics aren't developed at the same pace as bacteria resistance is developing, and a major reason why we need to be way more careful with antibiotic usage.

Other drugs, like insulin, are profitable because for someone with Type I diabetes, insulin is required, forever (barring a cure). Supply and demand means that insulin is going to be relatively expensive, especially since insulin production isn't particularly easy.

Leaving aside the big gub'mint/corporations suck arguments, drug research should be at least partially funded by the government, aka the people, and the companies that do the research should be able to recoup their investments.

Orphan drugs are often developed because they provide help for issues that are very rare, and would never be profitable to be developed.

Other drugs, for hypertension or ED, will be profitable because it is a chronic condition suffered by many people.

But to blame the FDA on drug prices isn't accurate. The FDA was developed because allowing any company to dump drugs on the market isn't a very good idea. For example, the FDA prevented a drug named thalidomide from being used for morning sickness in the US, whereas it was used in Europe. People complained at the time that the FDA was just gettin' in the way, as people are apt to do.

Of course in the end, the US had substantially less babies born looking like this, than in Europe.

Drugs save lives, and the companies that make them should be able to make money from them. That said, there has to be a middle ground where the drugs that saves lives are cheap/subsidized so that already-breathing human beings aren't forced to stop breathing simply because they can't afford those drugs. Otherwise, there is no society, and our species is an abject failure.

 

[rudeguy]

Clearly not. And the correct response is evidently to attempt to delete your posts as quickly as possible so you don't look like a complete fool.

Someone should tell him it's too late.... and he's just making himself look even worse....

Yea especially when brain is posting really insightful things, others are posting their experiences, still others ponder the ramifications of a capitalism based pharmaceutical market....tthen he comes in and literally calls everyone else an idiot and tells them to stfu.

 

[uclaLabrat]

Can anyone point out a couple drugs that made it to market that were not made by these greedy corporations? With all we spend on grants to universities and the sciences, there has to be at least a few.

Anyone?

I can't think of any. You have any idea how much it cost to produce a drug? Any idea at all? Universities don't have the kind of cash it takes to fund a clinical trial.

 

[uclaLabrat]

Go look at what they've spending money on and you'll have your answer.

The NIH gets +$30 billion annually. Maybe they should start by spending more wisely.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidma...sages-for-rabbits-meditation-for-hot-flashes/

Fern

$30 B is nothing. seriously, that's like 2-3 years of Pfizer's R&D budget? One company, granted the biggest, but one company. That would fund the R&D for 7-10 medium size biotechs for one year.