Obama's health policy may give a booster dose to Indian generics

[winnar111]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes...rticleshow/3710595.cms

NEW DELHI: US President-elect Barack Obama's aggressive agenda on healthcare may prove to be a growth pill for the Indian generic industry. Under
Obama, the proposed healthcare reforms include plans to lower drug costs by allowing import of safe medicines from other developed countries (into US), increasing the use of generic drugs in public programmes and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.

These proposals when implemented could prove to give a further push to India's pharma industry, particularly generics. The main challenge before the Obama government would be to cut rising costs while providing affordable accessible healthcare for all Americans.



Interesting way to create jobs over there instead of over here.

 

[Rainsford]

So your in favor of protectionism at the cost of peoples' health? Obama's plan sounds like a pretty good idea to me, and honestly I don't think we'll lose many pharma jobs in the US. Drugs in the US are so ridiculously overpriced that I have a hard time believing JOBS will be the first thing cut if competition heats up. I just don't buy that big pharma companies are the ones we need to be protecting against the hordes of sick people who need to choose between food and medicine.

 

[bozack]

yup, bye bye R&D here in the US, I know Merck's pipeline is pretty tapped and with nothing on the horizon, everything comming out of patent and their product going generic they are pretty screwed, they just closed at least three of their research sites (Rosetta, IRBM, and I believe Banyu) and I have heard they are selling off their Wayne facility, the only site growing is Boston and that is only because the overflow of people from Rosetta and the other sites are being shuttled here....AstraZeneca is in the same boat in that they are laying off pretty heavily and heard their site in Waltham MA is doing very poorly, and am betting Pfizer is as well...haven't heard much optimism from their CT facility. Many of these companies are looking at how much they can do in India, China, and Japan due to lower costs and skilled labor.

J&J are ok, but they pretty diversified with consumer grade goods and also medical devices, not sure about some of the smaller players like Shire, Biogen, or Millennium...and haven't heard much of Eli Lilly either.

EDIT: Rainsford, you obviously know very little of the industry, due to the lack of pipeline and generics the big companies have been hemmoraging jobs and money for a while now, the US market is really the last area where companies can cover their R&D costs...

Merck just announced a 7200 person layoff worldwide, and this was just after a 1200 person layoff earlier this year, not to mention the others they had in recent previous years.

not to mention they are closing the sites I listed above...
Pfizer laid off 10,000 last year alone, AstraZeneca is in the midst of a pretty large downsizing as well...

And I can go on....

Jobs are already being lost, and when there are no new drugs on the market and only old dated generics everyone is going to be scratching their asses wondering what the heck happened....do you really think R&D is free, remember the amount of drugs that aren't out of patent and making money are pretty small comparatively not to mention the length of time it now takes for FDA approval thanks to Vioxx and other cox 2's

 

[daishi5]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
So your in favor of protectionism at the cost of peoples' health? Obama's plan sounds like a pretty good idea to me, and honestly I don't think we'll lose many pharma jobs in the US. Drugs in the US are so ridiculously overpriced that I have a hard time believing JOBS will be the first thing cut if competition heats up. I just don't buy that big pharma companies are the ones we need to be protecting against the hordes of sick people who need to choose between food and medicine.

You do realize that drug companies need those profits for R&D. Think of all the people you can save by lowering the prices of drugs, now try to take a guess at how many people will die if the number of new drugs researched is cut in half. And, as the final nail in the coffin most drug companies will research non-necessary drugs because it is much easier to protect them from competition and politicians who are trying to "protect the little guy."

I don't know if which way is better to be honest. If other countries still do drug research, and our rate of research does not fall his plan will probably do a lot of good. If research falls precipitously and other nations are not producing new drugs as well in the long term the loss of that research could cost us far more than we realize. Impossible to predict, but I really would prefer more research over cheaper drugs now.

 

[tvarad]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
So your in favor of protectionism at the cost of peoples' health? Obama's plan sounds like a pretty good idea to me, and honestly I don't think we'll lose many pharma jobs in the US. Drugs in the US are so ridiculously overpriced that I have a hard time believing JOBS will be the first thing cut if competition heats up. I just don't buy that big pharma companies are the ones we need to be protecting against the hordes of sick people who need to choose between food and medicine.

While I agree that there's a fundamental disconnect between the cost of drugs and cost of production (including R&D), one must remember that almost all the innovation in medicinal drugs comes from Western companies. AFAIK, Indian companies have not introduced one original product based on their own research.

One reason they get away with producing copy-cat drugs is because, until recently, only a process and not the end product could be patented in India. So they just had to modify a little bit of this process, pass it off as different and could sell it in India. Also, off-patent drug sales are a big business for them in the West.

The Western drug companies take on the situation is that it pours in enormous sums of money in R&D and have to recoup it through higher pricing. My take is that the truth lies somewhere in between the price-gouging that they indulge in and the cheap pricing of generic drugs.

 

[bozack]

Originally posted by: daishi5
You do realize that drug companies need those profits for R&D. Think of all the people you can save by lowering the prices of drugs, now try to take a guess at how many people will die if the number of new drugs researched is cut in half. And, as the final nail in the coffin most drug companies will research non-necessary drugs because it is much easier to protect them from competition and politicians who are trying to "protect the little guy."

I don't know if which way is better to be honest. If other countries still do drug research, and our rate of research does not fall his plan will probably do a lot of good. If research falls precipitously and other nations are not producing new drugs as well in the long term the loss of that research could cost us far more than we realize. Impossible to predict, but I really would prefer more research over cheaper drugs now.

Our rate of reasearch has already declined drastically...the big players still put money to R&D but not nearly as much as they were in the past, which is why so many are having problems with their pipeline being lean or non existant as is the case of Merck and Astra.

 

[bozack]

Originally posted by: tvarad
The Western drug companies take on the situation is that it pours in enormous sums of money in R&D and have to recoup it through higher pricing. My take is that the truth lies somewhere in between the price-gouging that they indulge in and the cheap pricing of generic drugs.

Instrumentation is expensive, either the companies like Waters, Thermo, Perkin Elmer, Molecular Devices, Applied Biosystems, GE Healthcare, Agilent, Amersham, Beckman Coulter, Bio-Rad, Biospherix, Gilson, Tecan, and others will also have to cut costs or else innovation will be stifled...the best minds go to these large companies because they can buy the best equipment, provide the best facilites, and allow them to do their jobs to the best of their ability....already I have seen a decline in this and it has had a less than positive result on new drug discovery.

 

[fskimospy]

Someone better tell the pharmaceutical industry that they're cutting back on research. They seem to think they are increasing research year on year by about 6%, reaching a record of nearly $60 billion last year. But what do they know?

You're right though, people in the US should pay more for drugs for no particularly good reason other than to fund private corporations R+D budget. If their business plan is entirely dependent upon soaking US consumers due to massive incompetence and inaction on the American citizens' government's part, their business plan was really fucking stupid.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

R&D has declined because marketing has increased. They don't need R&D to make money anymore, they have P&R.

 

[bozack]

Originally posted by: Gonad the Barbarian
R&D has declined because marketing has increased. They don't need R&D to make money anymore, they have P&R.

Because of regulation changes they changed their approach, they aren't allowed to work with Doctors as they used to so now they have tried targeting consumers.

And marketing will only go so far, people still opt for the generic over the name brand whenever available.

 

[bozack]

Originally posted by: eskimospy
Someone better tell the pharmaceutical industry that they're cutting back on research. They seem to think they are increasing research year on year by about 6%, reaching a record of nearly $60 billion last year. But what do they know?

You're right though, people in the US should pay more for drugs for no particularly good reason other than to fund private corporations R+D budget. If their business plan is entirely dependent upon soaking US consumers due to massive incompetence and inaction on the American citizens' government's part, their business plan was really fucking stupid.

Eskimo, you're an idiot....

They have nothing in their pipelines, they have to spend on R&D now while they still have some capital left in the hopes that something comes out of it...but so far it has turned up very little.

If these companies get to the point where they have nothing on the horizon, and then compound that with their profits getting stifled due to restrictions on importation being lessened, then it is only a matter of time before they cut back even more than they have already and we see less innovation.

But whatever, I hope you guys get everything you want...it will be interesting to see everything fall apart all at once.

 

[charrison]

Costs of generics are pretty much a non issue at this point. Walmart started the $4 price war and everyone else has followed their lead.

Caterpillar has even contracted directly with walmart to provide drug benefits to their 70k employees.

 

[bozack]

Originally posted by: charrison
Costs of generics are pretty much a non issue at this point. Walmart started the $4 price war and everyone else has followed their lead.

Caterpillar has even contracted directly with walmart to provide drug benefits to their 70k employees.

not the cost of the generics, but rather giving more capital to countries like India, that in the case of Pharma add nothing from the standpoint of innovation, but instead leech off of the work of the US when drugs go off patent.

I guess the hope is that India can build up a better infrastructure that might foster some development work, but ultimately that would mean less jobs here in the US of that kind of white collar work.

 

[bamacre]

Under Obama, the proposed healthcare reforms include plans to lower drug costs by allowing import of safe medicines from other developed countries (into US), increasing the use of generic drugs in public programmes and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.

OMG no!! That's deregulation!! WTF is he doing?



Good job, Obama. More competition = better prices and higher quality goods for consumers. :thumbsup:

 

[winnar111]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
So your in favor of protectionism at the cost of peoples' health? Obama's plan sounds like a pretty good idea to me, and honestly I don't think we'll lose many pharma jobs in the US. Drugs in the US are so ridiculously overpriced that I have a hard time believing JOBS will be the first thing cut if competition heats up. I just don't buy that big pharma companies are the ones we need to be protecting against the hordes of sick people who need to choose between food and medicine.

Not at all. I'm curious as to the liberal theory that protectionism is somehow great when it protects the job of labor unions and unskilled workers, but not in this scenario. They have constantly whined about President Bush's trade agreements.

I do believe we have to honor our constitutional responsibility to protect our patents, though.

 

[glenn1]

Originally posted by: bozack

Originally posted by: charrison
Costs of generics are pretty much a non issue at this point. Walmart started the $4 price war and everyone else has followed their lead.

Caterpillar has even contracted directly with walmart to provide drug benefits to their 70k employees.

not the cost of the generics, but rather giving more capital to countries like India, that in the case of Pharma add nothing from the standpoint of innovation, but instead leech off of the work of the US when drugs go off patent.

I guess the hope is that India can build up a better infrastructure that might foster some development work, but ultimately that would mean less jobs here in the US of that kind of white collar work.

Those jobs are all in blue states like NJ anyway <shrug>

 

[winnar111]

Originally posted by: Gonad the Barbarian
R&D has declined because marketing has increased. They don't need R&D to make money anymore, they have P&R.

There are 2 obvious reasons for this:

1. New formula discoveries are down from the 1980s and 90s, and bringing these formulae to market costs more money for FDA approval. This cuts into the R&D rate of return.

2. Marketing makes money today, while our tax rates are reasonable. You have no idea what future taxes will be like.

 

[winnar111]

Originally posted by: bozack

Originally posted by: charrison
Costs of generics are pretty much a non issue at this point. Walmart started the $4 price war and everyone else has followed their lead.

Caterpillar has even contracted directly with walmart to provide drug benefits to their 70k employees.

not the cost of the generics, but rather giving more capital to countries like India, that in the case of Pharma add nothing from the standpoint of innovation, but instead leech off of the work of the US when drugs go off patent.

I guess the hope is that India can build up a better infrastructure that might foster some development work, but ultimately that would mean less jobs here in the US of that kind of white collar work.

Who would really want to go into R&D there when Indian companies don't honor our intellectual property? Lot of money down the drain for someone to steal your work.

 

[bozack]

Originally posted by: glenn1
[Those jobs are all in blue states like NJ anyway <shrug>

Yup, blue states will get bitchslapped, especially NJ, PA, MA, and CA...

NC is the only red that would take a big hit.

 

[abj13]

Originally posted by: bozack

Because of regulation changes they changed their approach, they aren't allowed to work with Doctors as they used to so now they have tried targeting consumers.

Please stop making BS up. Direct to consumer advertising for the pharmaceutical industry started in 1997 BECAUSE of the FDA changed the rules governing TV advertising. It did not start because of increased health care regulations, the regulations are a direct result of the non-stop diarrhea of ads now seen on TV.

Originally posted by: bozack
the big players still put money to R&D but not nearly as much as they were in the past, which is why so many are having problems with their pipeline being lean or non existant as is the case of Merck and Astra.

Astrazeneca's R&D has increased to 5.2 billion in 2007 from 3.38 billion in 2005.
Merck's R&D also has increased to 4.8 billion in 2007 from 3.8 billion in 2005

Yeah, they are cutting back on R&D :roll:
For someone who chastises others for not knowing a market, how hard is it to actually read a pharm's annual and earnings releases instead of posting BS?

 

[Balt]

Just as an aside, is there any information out there on how much these huge class action lawsuits costs the major pharmaceutical companies?

I'm not saying people don't deserve some kind of compensation if they suffer or have a loved one die because of unlisted side effects, but since most of the money probably just goes to lawyers anyway...

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: bozack
Jobs are already being lost, and when there are no new drugs on the market and only old dated generics everyone is going to be scratching their asses wondering what the heck happened....do you really think R&D is free, remember the amount of drugs that aren't out of patent and making money are pretty small comparatively not to mention the length of time it now takes for FDA approval thanks to Vioxx and other cox 2's

Do you think dumping money into R&D just magically gives you drugs? A lot of times, you hit dead ends. You might get something that could work in vitro but not in vivo. Your drug could work, but gets metabolized or post-digestion modification before it gets to the desired target, rendering it inoperable; you might have created something that is way too toxic for people; you might not have a delivery system for the drug; it could work, but just be extremely cost prohibitive to bring to market, such as protein-based drugs, since chemical protein synthesis takes a lot of materials on the industrial level and a lot of time (from my own experience in the lab, a 50 amino acid protein made using standard solid phase peptide synthesis protocols and native chemical ligation takes about a month to do the whole thing (lots of work ups, time for reactions, etc); you could always grow in cells and isolate, but that's a heavy task of its own).

Drug making is difficult and expensive. The problem comes in when other countries don't want to respect intellectual property rights because a drug is "too expensive". In some cases, they might have a legitimate claim, but in others, they are just stealing. In the US, they are also able to rip consumers off more, probably because they can charge more to the insurance companies and because they dump a ton of money into marketing.

 

[CycloWizard]

One thing no one stopped to consider: the pharm industry creates the most waste per pound of product of any industry. Synthetic, biologically active chemicals being produced in India rather than in the US will take one hell of a toll on the environment.

Also, if he means that imports of generics should be allowed because the drugs are still patented within the US or internationally, that would definitely be illegal. He could work to pass a law to make it legal, but any judge worth a shilling would be able to strike it down in less than a week as clearly unconstitutional.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Balt
Just as an aside, is there any information out there on how much these huge class action lawsuits costs the major pharmaceutical companies?

I'm not saying people don't deserve some kind of compensation if they suffer or have a loved one die because of unlisted side effects, but since most of the money probably just goes to lawyers anyway...

Most of the money doesn't go to lawyers, but a significant portion does because the lawyer is the one taking all the risk. If they don't win, the lawyer could go bankrupt.

I'll never understand the antipathy towards large lawsuits. You think Pfizer cares if someone wins a $10,000 settlement against them? The entire purpose of the laws in place is to keep corporations from doing things that hurt people. $10k wouldn't even make them blink. So, if you want the laws we make to actually affect the companies we make them for, large lawsuits are the way to go.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: Balt
Just as an aside, is there any information out there on how much these huge class action lawsuits costs the major pharmaceutical companies?

I'm not saying people don't deserve some kind of compensation if they suffer or have a loved one die because of unlisted side effects, but since most of the money probably just goes to lawyers anyway...

Most of the money doesn't go to lawyers, but a significant portion does because the lawyer is the one taking all the risk. If they don't win, the lawyer could go bankrupt.

I'll never understand the antipathy towards large lawsuits. You think Pfizer cares if someone wins a $10,000 settlement against them? The entire purpose of the laws in place is to keep corporations from doing things that hurt people. $10k wouldn't even make them blink. So, if you want the laws we make to actually affect the companies we make them for, large lawsuits are the way to go.

Maybe if the FDA could actually do its damn job there wouldn't be so many lawsuits. People think "oh it is FDA-approved, it must be safe," then they find out later that it isn't, and its too late.