From what I understand… If the pharma companies don’t agree to sell to Canada at the controlled price, they’ll just break the patent. True, false?
And if reimportation takes off, will Canada actually buy ~10x what they need to sell back to US?
Actually, what particularly annoys me is I read some years ago that pharmaceutical companies spend a larger proportion of their budget on marketing than research. This is why I don’t buy the, “but, if we lower our prices, we’ll have to spend less on research” whinge.
CJ
I can’t look for the link till I get home tonight on the amount of money the US governtment puts into grants and the amount of the research that is done by Universities. It was an NPR radio show I heard it on and it is possible that I missunderstood the man talking. I am not ignoring the request for the link though and I will look for it.
Well, its a catch 22. If they dont market the products aggressively they don`t sell enough to have enough in sales revenue to fund further research. Plus, I think the Pharmas think that if poeple see the ads on TV the people assume that the drug is legit and the company is well established.
So, in the end, marketing and research go hand in hand.
Haven’t you ever seen *Crocodile Dundee[/]? Those aussies are practically fucking bulletproof. I imagine they’re fireproof as well.
It’s not that the car companies don’t care about the aussies, it’s that Americans are such pussies they have to take extra actions to protect us.
-Joe, inserts Comes from the land down under joke here.
Wasn’t there a time (quite recently) when it wasn’t allowed for drugs to be advertised in the USA? You may remember it as the golden time before we had Pfizer providing a good chunk of what’s on television.
That being the case, by your logic, doesn’t that mean that the pharma companies wouldn’t have been able to survive up until that point?
-Joe, viagara overdose!
Possibly naive question:
If I am a pharma company and I’ve spent vast amounts to promote flabooshaphin as the best treatment for diaplupus of the plux…
…what incentive do I have to spend more on R&D to create something better than flabooshaphin, if it’s just going to mean I have to replace this product I’ve marketed so aggressively?
That’s what I heard from a pharmaceutical industry guy during an NPR interview. According to him, a lot of countries have such price controls, and they essentially blackmail the pharmaceutical companies into selling at those prices, using the threat of breaking the patent (and licensing the contract out to a local company able to do so) to do so.
I guess we have to decide whether or not we want a free pharmaceutical market with competitive pricing (closer to the US) or one that has government caps on pricing (like Canada). The argument for government caps is (obviously) people get their drugs cheaper (on that same radio show, it was said that Flonase in Canada is $22 vs. $78 in the USA). The argument for competitive pricing is that price caps would stifle innovation, as fewer companies would undertake risky R&D ventures if there wasn’t potential for the big score (the industry guy said that about 4 out of 5 drugs that enter human testing don’t make it to the market, usually for toxicity reasons). Also, he stated that the average drug costs about $800 million to research.
I’m sure he was skewing the facts at least somewhat to serve his industry, but that’s what he said.
Because eventually the patent will expire, and everyone can make your flbooshapin cheaper. So you have to come up with a new, better, faster model with a new patent so you can charge up the wazoo for it.
On the subject of how drugs are expensive because the valiant and honorable drug companies “donate” so much of their revenue to R&D…
If everyone one of those little pills, especially the hot, new products, are so fucking expensive, then how come my doctor is sending me away with bushels and bushels of free samples he got from the sales rep???
I’ll have to see if I can find a copy of the Chicago Tribune article on the web, but I recall reading that pharma marketing expenses are two to three times what they need to be. Profit is fine. Gouging Americans because they can is just bullshit. (I wish I was more erudite.)
's what they always say, isn’t it? The California smoking ban was going to shut down EVERY BAR IN THE STATE. CATASTROPHE IS COMING! And yet it hasn’t. And so on. Every time people start agitating for change in business practices, business paints dire doom-and-gloom scenarios because it’s deathly afraid of change.
Frankly, I’d be willing to sacrifice four different wiener drugs for affordable prescription drugs.
They used to market heavily to the doctors via drug reps. Probably still do.
I dont recall a time when marketing to the public was illegal. I think there is a problem with the pharmas marketing *prescription* drugs, that is why the commercials are so vague. - guy with commercial type voice; "See your doctor if you think you might need phloogerbautin sometime in the near future, even though I cant tell you what it does and until you actually see your doctor you have no idea what it does and you`ll probably forget the name of the drug by the time of your next doctor visit." flash banner of pharma across screen — phfizzer.
why are some commercials so vague like that?
Others like the wiener pills and the allergy meds are pretty descriptive.
Like, what the f is the “purple pill” and what does it do/treat??
If they tell you what the drug does, they also have to tell you about all the side effects.
I remember reading that in, I think, Manufacturing Victims.
That the pharmco’s go even further and send pamphlets of their drugs to school counselors and social workers (obviously talking about Ritalin here), so that they can ‘suggest’ these drugs to parents even though they are not medical practitioners!
And I’ve seen the shit that they send to doctors! The pamphlets, cups, pens, pads, clocks, toys, calendars, stickers, mobils, paperweights, cd’s, etc. are absolutely insane! If you don’t prescribe their drug after a rep has flooded your office with this shit, you’ll at least dream about it for weeks.
And I’ve seen the purchase orders for all this shit. It’s amazing what all that shwag costs. Not that hiring a CRO to run a clinical trial is chump change. It’s big money all over the place.
I assume they don’t tell you what it’s for so you have to ask your doctor. And then you can pressure him for a prescription. I also think by not telling you what it does, the med itself will stay in your mind because now you’re curious. Whereas if they told you, you’d just block it out like so much pabulum.I think it’s done that way to set up the atmosphere to buy in the patient’s mind.
Ah, the little purple pill. What a fuckload of crap. When the patent ran out on the original nexium, the company just changed the formulation of the coating, patented THAT and then starting running ads to the effect that the “new” nexium was so much better! Run to your doctor now, my little kiddies, and buy some!
HEH!!
A must see for anyone checking in here.
Yeah, well this is a must read for anyone checking in here too.
Fellow Dopers lives made vastly better by prescription drugs.
The bulk of these drugs were developed by evil, profit seeking American drug companies. And a great number of them simply didn’t exist twenty or thirty years ago.
Look at the stories in this thread, and think how miserable these people would be if these drugs didn’t exist.
Think how miserable I’d be. When I was a kid, I’d typically miss one or two school days a week due to migraine headaches. The drugs that existed then to treat them weren’t up to the job. If I was still getting migraines to this degree, I’d be unemployable.
Thanks to Relpax and Topamax, I’m getting migraines about once a month, and not missing any work over them.
If drug companies had to deal with price controls here, like they do elsewhere, they’d simply stop innovating. The kids that are missing school today for “untreatable” ailments - well, they’re out of luck, I guess. Just like I was out of luck twenty-five years ago.
I’m not saying drug companies are universally good, or that there aren’t things we can’t do to get prescriptions to the needy. But let’s be careful that any solutions we come up with preserve the innovation and responsiveness of the American drug industry.
Let’s not kill this particular goose.
No, Mr. Moto, you’re wrong.
Price controls would not stop drug innovation.
THAT’s the blackmail they want you to believe.
Do you think that their sales in Canada don’t make them a profit? Why would they bother supplying there if it didn’t? That’s just silly.
Hell, I’d be DEAD without innovative new drugs. And would companies really stop innovating if they had to deal with price controls? If that were the case, wouldn’t every drug company eventually be producing only generics once their patents run out?
Of course they should make a profit. It’s key to the quality of drugs we have to day, as you say. No one at Big Pharma is investing millions solely because they’re altruistic. But I do believe that they are unfairly taking advantage of the American public and the system as it is set up (including patent law, the FDA, Congress, our gullible selves, etc) to make undue profit. I just want to see some balance in the system. (Because many of us have to pay whatever they say because we have to have life-saving drugs. It’s not a matter of what the market will bear, because I have to pay what they say for my meds, even if it means buying less food.)