I don’t believe they’d stop… well, they would, if money were the point of it all. But innovation would certainly slow down. It’s just basic math. If that’s the price people are willing to pay for cheaper drugs, that’s fine. Are most people really willing to pay that price?
Certainly pharmas are not saints; some companies are better than others, that’s for sure. But this whole idea of “undue profits” sticks at me. Must pharmas be regulated to take in only so much profit simply because they make medicine? Is it immoral of me to get an annual bonus because of what I work on? Can anyone define exactly how much profit is too much?
You assume incorrectly, as you’d know if you read the fucking thread.
Wrong again. There is no “old Nexium”; the active ingredient in Nexium is a new chemical entity, formed by chiral separation of the racemic mixture used in Prilosec. It’s true that Nexium was introduced because Prilosec was going off patent, but the difference was real and beneficial, and nothing so trivial as a coating change. The only other thing you got right in this post is your screen name.
I’m self employed and uninsured, and I order my medication from Canada. No, its not “feel good” medication, and I will be taking them for the rest of my life. The difference in filling the same prescription amount in US vs. Canadian – same exact medication is over $1,000. I suck at math, but it works out to like a 500 or 600% markup. And that’s just one of the prescriptions I need. If I had to fill the prescription in the US, I could choose either the medication, or living indoors. Its the same damn medication – one company is a Canadian pharmaceutical company with a 25 year history marketing to 115 countries worldwide, the other is a partnership with Johnson & Johnson. So you can go on and on about safety and research, blah blah blah. The only reason US drug companies don’t want US citizens to purchase drugs from foreign countries is because they’d lose their exhorbitant markups they charge the insurance companies and Medicaid and Medicare, and the poor schmucks like me who don’t make enough to qualify for Medicaid, but don’t make enough to pay for self-employment rate insurance. Fuck 'em. I’ll keep ordering from Canada.
You sure about that? I’m pretty sure there used to be(and still is) extremely strict regulation of direct marketing to consumers of prescription drugs, and that commercials on TV(especially lame ass fucking misleading ones) are illegal, verboten, unethical, Etc.
Well, GaWd, I’d say that there is sufficient evidence that those commercials aren’t illegal. The evidence: They’re on TV. If you so much as swear on TV the FCC is on your butt, and these guys are pretty much advertising at will.
I think it’s safe to say that those ads are legal.
Yes, the ads are legal. There’s some criticism that the FDA is a little slow in taking misleading ads off the air, but see here for an example of them going after a company for not being entirely truthful in their advertisting. Personally I think most if not all pharma advertising is unethical, for the simple fact that medicine isn’t something you should get the idea of taking from a commercial.
Unless the drugs are free, aren’t there always going to be people who cannot afford them? This drug you take, you can afford the Canadian price; what about the people who can’t?
In my mind the underlying issue is that drugs aren’t an entitlement for those who cannot afford them, and there are always going to be people stuck between being wealthy enough to afford it or poor enough to qualify for government assistance. Re-importation isn’t going to solve that problem. So you have to decide whether drugs are just another commodity in the economy – affordable for some, not for others – or a basic right. If you think drugs are a right, then re-importation isn’t the answer.
I’m not talking about drugs as a right, I’m talking about drugs as a necessity - in my case - antiseizure meds. Reimportation ican still be costly, just not as exhorbitant as trying to buy them in the US. One of them still doesn’t give me much of a price break – but any break is better than none at all. What you’re saying is screw the people who can’t afford it - let the drug companies make their profit anyway. There are countless senior citizens who either import their meds or travel to Canada or Mexico because their fixed income just doesn’t allow them to cover the gap. And I’ll disagree with you that reimportation doesn’t solve the problem of the people stuck between – if you can’t afford it here but can afford it there – doesn’t that in and of itself solve the problem? If I can’t afford a $1200 prescription bought at the local Walgreens, but I can afford to purchase a $200 prescription in Canada, doesn’t it do exactly that?
Yes and no. You are technically correct, but wrong in your conclusion.
Drug companies work a lot like Microsoft - or any other field with a cheap product that is made with a huge initial investment. Drugs generally don’t cost that much once the formula and mass production techniques are discovered. But the initial cost is extremely high.
Like Microsoft, their business plan is to sell boatloads of drugs developed at high cost, and so amortize their initial investment over a large coverage of the medical field. Additionally, they need to make big profits to justify investments.
Now, Price-Control nations set their negotiated prices above the cost to produce. The problem is that these countries aren’t paying their fair share of the investment cost, which falls disproportionately on the US. We could save trillions if Canada and Europe cut their price controls, but they are too cheap.
You misunderstood me. You’re saying as long as you can afford it, you’re happy. What I’m saying is that even if the U.S. sells the drug at Canadian prices, there will still be people who can’t afford them. You can pay the $200 a month for your drug; my friend E., for example, cannot pay that much for a prescription every month. How would bringing the price down to $200 help her? It wouldn’t.
If drugs are not a right, as cars or books or houses are not a right, then there will always be someone who cannot afford them. It takes a hell of a lot of money to develop the drugs, make the drugs, and run the ancillary bits of the process. If you want the drugs to be affordable to everyone – effectively free – the answer is not re-importation – the answer then is to find some way to subsidize research and manufacture to the point where drug companies don’t need any external profit in order to do what they do. To me personally, I don’t give a shit where my paycheck comes from, the government or my company. Money is money. But it matters to me that pharmas do have the freedom to invest their money in new ideas, and aren’t constrained by bureaucracy or politics or what-have-you.
Unless everyone can afford it, there’s no price to high? That’s one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard.
Fireman: I’m sorry, ma’am, we can’t go save your kids from the your burning apartment building. The fire is on the 8th floor, and I know your apartment is only on the second floor, but if we can’t save the people on the 9th floor, well, it’s just wrong to save ANYONE.
I’m responding to your original premise: that you have to decide whether drugs are a commodity or a right. I don’t think that’s even an issue. Either they are a medical necessity, or they aren’t. The issue is the cost, not entitlement. Reimportation addresses the need for affordability of a medical necessity, but unavailabity due to cost to a certain population - either because of lack of insurance (in my case) and the drug companies desire for profit, or for example, senior citizens on fixed income where their Medicare just doesn’t make up the difference. Let’s face it – how many years does it really take for drug companies to recoup their reseach costs when the markup is 500%?
Let me try again. If even one person cannot afford the drug at the Canadian price, re-importation hasn’t solved the problem for that person. Right now the problem with the drug prices is that only X percent of people can afford them. With re-importation then maybe Y percent can afford them. But it’s never going to be 100 percent under the system we have now, or even allowing people to buy it at a lower price if that price isn’t engineered specifically to be affordable by everyone. That’s the problem as I see it. Re-importation addresses the problem for some people, but not for everyone. I understand that partial solutions can be good first steps, but what I want to see is a solution that addresses the problem for everyone, that makes life-saving drugs available to everyone who needs them. Currently drugs are a commodity, and as such if you can’t afford them, you’re fucked. If drugs are a right – if health care itself is a right – then the structure gets changed to make sure everyone has access and gets what they need.
Nobody needs to drag out the little old ladies on Medicaid to make the point with me that there is a serious problem here. I just don’t see re-importation as the solution. I only wish I had the knowledge to craft a solution myself.
Okay, first you guys cheap shot us because you think you have to spend all your money on military to protect us, now you’re blaming us for your exorbitant drug prices. I think you’ve been watching too much South Park.
Just because your drug companies have no ethics about charging the bejeesus out of its customers, don’t be blaming us for their lack of ethics. We didn’t make them invest money in R&D. The drug companies know very well what they’re doing, and how to make a profit at it. Maybe you should be blaming your governments for not protecting its citizens from price gouging for life-saving drugs, the way the Canadian government has.
Oh yea, that’s the solution, eliminate price controls. Because there’s no way that businesses would inflate the price across the board, take the profits, and then raise the prices again when putting “You Could Have A 4 Hour Erection!” ads on every minute gets too costly.
Trying to get me to feel sorry for the poor widdle drug companies is like trying to get me to feel sorry for poor widdle Enron or poor widdle Halliburton. Ain’t fuckin’ happening.
The 90% figure sounds inflated to me, but I’d like to see a cite on exactly how much government money goes into Big Pharma’s R&D costs. Preferably a figure that excludes marketing costs. My intellectual property law professor brought up furlibusea’s point to debunk the argument that there would be no development of new drugs without strict patent laws.
Many years ago I worked for a medium sized pharmaceutical company, doing accounts payable. Here’s what I learned about the industry:
Our premier product, which was exceedingly popular, was sold at a 95% markup. It was still protected by a patent during my tenure. The patent was due to expire shortly, so we hiked up the price while we still could.
One of the biggest checks we wrote all year was to the Pharmaceutical Manufacturer’s Association, the lobbying group. Their dues were huge.
We also paid big bucks to Universities to do product testing (efficacy and toxicology, as I recall), and to professors and doctors who spoke publicly in favor of our product. It was interesting to me that Universities often forgot to ever cash the checks! You’d think they’d want that $50k in the bank.
When the premier product’s patent expired a couple of years after I’d left the company, and the replacement product didn’t take off & thus the bottom line was suffering, they responded by firing everyone in R & D. Just out of the blue one day.
I never personally saw any interactions between our company and the FDA, but I did overhear conversations and pick up gossip indicating that we had employees who felt that they could influence the FDA to act favorably on our behalf. Specifically in the case of the replacement product, which we were trying to hurry into the marketplace.
One other particularly ironic point - has anyone else already pointed out that many pharmaceutical companies have their manufacturing plants in Puerto Rico? And have had them there for years? Flights in and out of San Juan are full of pharmaceutical execs.
Do you mean here that they need to make big profits overall to lure investors? Because if you do, I call bullshit. There’s no reason that companies can’t get investors without exorbitant profits.
Hey buddy, go fuck yourself. Sideways.
Do you think Canada should be barred from supplying generics to third-world countries, too? Because that’s basically stealing from America. If you think about it. :rolleyes:
The American health care system is so beyond fucked up, but if there were some hope of reason, I might suggest some scheme in which there is a pool of wealth that is used to cover parts of prescription costs, and is funded by profit sharing from the pharma’s.