Administration Opposes Democrats? Plan for Negotiating Medicare Drug Prices

[BaliBabyDoc]

Originally posted by: Specop 007
How about we share the R&D costs with the rest of the world? Someone has to pay for R&D, its that simple. I for one am getting tired of being the guy that does it. Then again, I understand the importance of R&D so I think it should continue as well.

We do share the R&D costs with the rest of the world. Our government just doesn't care that industry gets the lion's share of profits from US consumers/taxpayers.

I don't have global sales at my fingertips but I would wager that total R&D spending for the top 15 pharmaceutical companies is easily covered by world drug sales (without the USA). If Big Pharma dropped DTC advertisements that would be 11-figures in potential R&D money.

In 2002, the off-label sale of the best-selling drugs in 15 categories (off-label means used for an indication or population it was never approved for) was more than the Top 10 drug companies spent in R&D. Try this on for size, in 2002 industry spent $13B on R&D and $15B in marketing/ads. These days a whole new industry has developed for the purpose of 'repurposing' of drugs. In essence, trying to find ways to sell more drug without doing much research.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

The health insurers' interest group/association is apparently planning to roll out reasonably priced health plans designed to reduce the 46mil Americans without coverage. Allegedly, the plans will focus on disease prevention and health maintenance. I wonder what would happen to drug costs if the rest of the healthcare 'system' took that approach?

On-label prescriptions in the US
1997-98: 222.7 million
2002-03: 409.3 million retail sales $42.6B

Off-label prescriptions
1997-98: 58.6m
2002-03: 115.1m retail sales $12.9B

 

[GroundedSailor]

Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc

Originally posted by: Specop 007
How about we share the R&D costs with the rest of the world? Someone has to pay for R&D, its that simple. I for one am getting tired of being the guy that does it. Then again, I understand the importance of R&D so I think it should continue as well.

We do share the R&D costs with the rest of the world. Our government just doesn't care that industry gets the lion's share of profits from US consumers/taxpayers.

I don't have global sales at my fingertips but I would wager that total R&D spending for the top 15 pharmaceutical companies is easily covered by world drug sales (without the USA). If Big Pharma dropped DTC advertisements that would be 11-figures in potential R&D money.

In 2002, the off-label sale of the best-selling drugs in 15 categories (off-label means used for an indication or population it was never approved for) was more than the Top 10 drug companies spent in R&D. Try this on for size, in 2002 industry spent $13B on R&D and $15B in marketing/ads. These days a whole new industry has developed for the purpose of 'repurposing' of drugs. In essence, trying to find ways to sell more drug without doing much research.

You should also mention that the $15B in marketing does not include the huge amount of drugs which are given as physicians samples and written off (at their list price) as charity by the drug manufacturers. I don't have the figures on that but I've read somewhere it is in Billions.