I recall reading that the pharmaceutical companies spend about 80% of their research budget on lifestyle drugs (viagra etc) and 20% on lifesaving drugs. There have been many articles and conferences lately on the extreme difficulty of developing countries’ to afford these lifesaving drugs.
Perhaps a solution is some sort of international body that would buy out the patents for the lifesaving drugs thereby giving pharmaceuticals enough of a profit motive to do the research. That body could then set the prices to what people can afford.
The pharmaceuticals could then do what they wanted with the other 80%.
[quasi-hijack]No, it’s not. The hospital where I work had to dispose of God-knows-how-many albuterol inhalers because they had no albuterol in them. Thank God the US has a system and bureaucracy in place to ensure the American people have access to safe, effective medication that has been repeatedly tested, and that there is a mechanism in place for dealing with problems such as the albuterol inhalers. It’s worth paying a little more for my medications to know that.
Freaky, do you have cites on that spending more money on common cold cures than on lifesaving drugs?
Even if that is true, do you wish to support that concept of socializing everything? I have not seen many major medical advances come from our Canadian neighbors, a pretty socialized system.
On the complaint that seniors are being raped for their money, if the drug companies did not have the lure of profits to develop these drugs, these drugs would never have existed in the first place. Seniors are no worse off for making the decision to spend a huge amount of money on their meds. This is a choice that THEY have made, the drug companies are not forcing them to do this. If the seniors were not being raped for their drugs, they could just go and die like their counterparts a decade ahead of them. And yet, they make the choice to live, and for the good of all, in the near future, patents will expire and seniors can have all of the advantages of current seniors without the downfall of spending thousands on meds.
It’s called a “patent”. It lasts for seven years, I believe, 'fore ANYONE is allowed to use it. (Feel free to correct me on the time restraints).
About A: You want to FORCE drug companies to lower their prices? I won’t even get into the horrible implications of THAT statement…
About B: Which would raise taxes extremely. Just because Big Papa Gov’t takes the check doesn’t mean that the drugs would be any cheaper.
About C: Senior citizens need viagra? They need Allegra? Or do they just need some good, old fashioned aspirin for sore joints? You seem to believe that senior citizens are all completely helpless and wracked with pain.
Anyway, here’s a fact of life, ladies and gentlemen… if it’s hard to make, it costs a lot. Figuring out which mixtures and dosages of chemicals affect the human body positively with few negative side effects is, contrary to Freaky’s popular belief, very difficult. If you want cheap medicine, make it yourself.
No. Do you? Why don’t you tell us? Like, with numbers? And preferably a dollar sign in front?
'Cuz that’s where the money is.
And realistically impossible to implement without a massive upheaval in our governmental system. Have you ever heard of “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”? If we already had a socialized medicine system in effect, you’d be arguing “Well, maybe we should put control in the hands of private businesses… then they’d be motivated by money, and make more new and better products…”
Does Albuterol kill its users? Does it contain 50% rat feces? Do you buy an Albutrol inhaler and instead find it contains urine?
No.
The problem you describe sounds like a problem with the inhalers themselves, not the medicine… which would be a problem in the manufacturing, not development.