There are tens of thousands of honest, hard-working people involved in healthcare, including doctors, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, nurses' aides, technicians, social workers, and many others who are not making millions of dollars and who are not ripping anybody off but are merely going to work each day helping those with illness and disability get their lives back. America spends more per person on medcations than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations. Of the estimated $2.7 trillion America spends annually on health care, drugs account for 10 percent of the total. America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.
A technique is called “product hopping” —making small and insignificant changes in a drug whose patent is about to expire, so it’s technically new. For example, last February, before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer’s, Forest Laboratories announced it would stop selling the existing tablet form of in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR. The capsules were just a reformulated version of the tablet. But even the minor change prevented pharmacists from substituting generic versions of the tablet. Result: higher profits for Forest Labs
Another tactic is for drug companies to pay the makers of generic drugs to delay their cheaper versions. These so-called “pay-for-delay” agreements generate big profits for both the proprietary manufacturers and the generics. Pay-for-delay deals have postponed as many as 142 generics from coming to market, according to Federal Trade Commission reports. Key drugs highlighted in the report include:
Tamoxifen: People with breast cancer waited nine years for generic competition to bring down the cost of this drug, a widely used treatment for hormone-receptive breast cancer, due to a pay-for-delay deal.
Lipitor: People with high cholesterol pay as much as $205 for a 30-day supply of Lipitor. Now that the generic version is available, it costs $18. During the time the generic was delayed, Pfizer made $7.4 billion in sales of Lipitor in the last year alone.
Lamictal: People with epilepsy can pay as much as $465 for brand-name Lamictal – 33 times the price of the generic, now that it is finally available. Pay for delay postponed the generic for three years.
Cipro: The brand-name version of the antibiotic Cipro can cost $346 for the most commonly prescribed quantity, while the generic costs just $23. Bayer made a deal with generic drug makers to delay the drug for seven years.
Provigil: Many multiple sclerosis patients and others faced paying up to $1,200 a month for this drug because the brand-name manufacturer, Cephalon, paid four different generic drug manufacturers a total of more than $200 million to keep the generic version off the market until 2012.
Pay-for-delay deals are currently blocking generic versions of at least five drugs: Aggrenox (stroke prevention), Niaspan (high cholesterol), AndroGel (synthetic testosterone), Nuvigil (narcolepsy), and Nexium (heartburn and GERD).
The drug companies say they need the additional profits to pay for researching and developing new drugs. But the government supplies much of the research through the National Institutes of Health.
The lobbying of government cost pharmaceutical companies $225 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than the formidable lobbying expenditures of America’s military contractors. In 2012, they spent over $36 million on political campaigns, making them the biggest political contributor of all American industries. The law prohibits the U.S. government from using its considerable bargaining power under Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. This was part of the deal the drug corporations extracted for its support of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Medicaid often pays half of what Medicare pays.
People's health care should not be determined by the profit motive. Dope dealers and drug pushers have always been shady profiteers, very much like capitalists. Pharmaceutical companies are only concerned about making profits for shareholders.
A technique is called “product hopping” —making small and insignificant changes in a drug whose patent is about to expire, so it’s technically new. For example, last February, before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer’s, Forest Laboratories announced it would stop selling the existing tablet form of in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR. The capsules were just a reformulated version of the tablet. But even the minor change prevented pharmacists from substituting generic versions of the tablet. Result: higher profits for Forest Labs
Another tactic is for drug companies to pay the makers of generic drugs to delay their cheaper versions. These so-called “pay-for-delay” agreements generate big profits for both the proprietary manufacturers and the generics. Pay-for-delay deals have postponed as many as 142 generics from coming to market, according to Federal Trade Commission reports. Key drugs highlighted in the report include:
Tamoxifen: People with breast cancer waited nine years for generic competition to bring down the cost of this drug, a widely used treatment for hormone-receptive breast cancer, due to a pay-for-delay deal.
Lipitor: People with high cholesterol pay as much as $205 for a 30-day supply of Lipitor. Now that the generic version is available, it costs $18. During the time the generic was delayed, Pfizer made $7.4 billion in sales of Lipitor in the last year alone.
Lamictal: People with epilepsy can pay as much as $465 for brand-name Lamictal – 33 times the price of the generic, now that it is finally available. Pay for delay postponed the generic for three years.
Cipro: The brand-name version of the antibiotic Cipro can cost $346 for the most commonly prescribed quantity, while the generic costs just $23. Bayer made a deal with generic drug makers to delay the drug for seven years.
Provigil: Many multiple sclerosis patients and others faced paying up to $1,200 a month for this drug because the brand-name manufacturer, Cephalon, paid four different generic drug manufacturers a total of more than $200 million to keep the generic version off the market until 2012.
Pay-for-delay deals are currently blocking generic versions of at least five drugs: Aggrenox (stroke prevention), Niaspan (high cholesterol), AndroGel (synthetic testosterone), Nuvigil (narcolepsy), and Nexium (heartburn and GERD).
The drug companies say they need the additional profits to pay for researching and developing new drugs. But the government supplies much of the research through the National Institutes of Health.
The lobbying of government cost pharmaceutical companies $225 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than the formidable lobbying expenditures of America’s military contractors. In 2012, they spent over $36 million on political campaigns, making them the biggest political contributor of all American industries. The law prohibits the U.S. government from using its considerable bargaining power under Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. This was part of the deal the drug corporations extracted for its support of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Medicaid often pays half of what Medicare pays.
People's health care should not be determined by the profit motive. Dope dealers and drug pushers have always been shady profiteers, very much like capitalists. Pharmaceutical companies are only concerned about making profits for shareholders.
2 comments:
I used some of this article (you didn't post a link), and this was a response. I don't know if any or all of it is valid? Just seems to be someone who works in the industry's PR department?
There's a lot more to drug research than you're implying. Drug companies suffer huge R&D costs for many thousands of variants of a particular compound, of which only one or two may produce a viable drug which they can then make profit from.
If the researching drug companies were not able to make a profit from a drug, they would not develop it, and then generics companies would not be able to manufacture it because it would not "exist" as it were. Generics companies cut down on costs by only making drugs that are already researched and clinically trialled, as such they can produce the same drugs for much cheaper. If there are no drugs to make though, then the generics companies can't produce anything.
Any research you think is provided through the National Institute of Health is insignificant compared to the amount required to be performed by a drug company that is developing new drugs.
To quote Bill Gates:
"Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives," he said. "The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding. But if you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria."
Although you are correct that business out-spends government sourcing in R and D you exaggerate when you claim government i insignificant. Full figures here:
http://www.researchamerica.org/uploads/healthdollar12.pdf
As for true costs of new drugs they are not often easily determined but this article tries to clarify them
http://www.pharmamyths.net/files/Biosocieties_2011_Myths_of_High_Drug_Research_Costs.pdf
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