
Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices - wesd
http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-drug-prices-20160826-snap-story.html
======
joesmo
Another casualty of our idiotic patent laws meeting our idiotic health care
laws. Every single law is designed to improve profits at the cost of lives and
in America, most people are totally ok with that despite what the article
claims. Then they justify it by saying that we wouldn't have companies to make
drugs if we forced them to have reasonable prices. Our idiot legislators
really think that you can get rid of drug dealers by keeping prices high? I
cannot imagine such just cruelty and hate driven by greed. If the patent
program ended tomorrow or was severely reduced in scope (duration of patent),
we'd have so much competition (and therefore affordable prices) in this space,
it'd start to overshadow our current tech explosion. If we allow Medicare to
negotiate prices, we'd have much more affordable prices.

The judicial death penalty we impose on criminals might be defendable
ethically, but the death penalty we impose on our own citizens due to greed
and cruelty is indefensible, cruel, and monstrous. Just so a few beyond-rich
people can get even richer. Disgusting.

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koolba
Step 1: Ban direct to consumer marketing.

Step 2: Ban doctor kickbacks including "educational seminars" in the
Caribbean.

Step 3: Join the rest of the western world and establish a single payer
system.

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fspeech
Some of the existing dysfunctional drug market dynamics can be addressed
through a break up of the vertical integration: companies can choose to be the
R&D/manufacturer in which case they are not allowed to market to
doctors/consumers; or they can choose to be a marketer/distributor.
Manufacturers must treat marketers non-discriminatorily.

This way we can separate the wheat from the chaff. Truly revolutionary
products can still charge high patent-protected prices by their exclusive
manufacturers. OTOH marketing driven products with weak perceived advantages
won't be able to charge the high prices as they do now. In the Epi-pen case,
the patent owner will still be the exclusive manufacturer. But if they raise
the price by 400% to all the marketers the marketers may choose to promote
other generic products instead.

~~~
tamana
Epipen is a patneted standard. It's akin to patenting HTTP and the pretending
we could all switch if we want.

~~~
fspeech
Under my scenario of separation of the marketing and the manufacturing
entities, there would be much less incentive to create such a monopolized
standard in the first place. The marketers would worry about getting into a
jam like this. On the other hand if the invention is truly essential, they
would have no choice.

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mlinksva
Californians (including me) who have not looked at November initiatives yet -
this article mentions the Drug Price Relief Act which seems to be
[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_61,_Drug_Pric...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_61,_Drug_Price_Standards_\(2016\))

> A "yes" vote supports regulating drug prices by requiring state agencies to
> pay the same prices that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (USDVA)
> pays for prescription drugs.

Advocacy site: [http://yeson61.com/](http://yeson61.com/)

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godzillabrennus
We need to find a way to decrease the time and cost of introducing new drugs
to market so we can disarm the argument these drug companies have about
needing insane profits to fund research.

~~~
drakonandor
America's prices are a subsidy for the rest of the world, whom relies on
American medications that they often outright infringe ownership of.

Say what you want about America, but it can't be denied that the majority of
drugs in the last few decades which the world depends on has been thanks to
the American government, American companies, and the American people.

One way to fix the price would be simply to stop giving away our inventions
for pennies, and get the rest of the world's governments to actually pay a
fair price if they want to use our products.

~~~
jgeada
Since a significant number of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are
_not_ American ([http://blog.proclinical.com/who-are-the-
top-10-pharmaceutica...](http://blog.proclinical.com/who-are-the-
top-10-pharmaceutical-companies-in-the-world)), I find this statement dubious
to begin with. And since pharma companies spend more on marketing than they
spend on R&D
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-
pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/)) I
also doubt that research costs are as high as people claim.

It is _much_ more likely that, given our largely unregulated market for
medicine, the market is pricing medicines in this country as expected by
theory: as high as the market will bear. No ethics or morals apply, just pure
profit. Whether that is OK or not depends on whether you happen to critically
need those medicines and can afford them.

Other countries are allowed to negotiate the price of drugs and/or restraint
profits made, so their prices for the same drugs are often significantly
lower. Companies in those countries still make a profit, just less than here.

~~~
danielweber
> Since a significant number of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies
> are not American

Those foreign companies sell to Americans using American IP law.

> I find this statement dubious to begin with. And since pharma companies
> spend more on marketing than they spend on R&D

This is irrelevant. You can't draw any conclusions from the fact that I spend
more on taxes than on housing.

> Companies in those countries still make a profit, just less than here.

Not everyone can be the marginal customer.

~~~
jgeada
Seriously?

1- I was not the one claiming that the rest of the world is ripping off
American drug companies.

2- the (obvious) point is that R&D isn't the major cost expense that was being
posited in the original post. If cost of developing new drugs was inline with
what the original post claimed, then you'd find both pharmaceutical companies
profits being lower and fraction of expenses spent on R&D higher. Facts show
otherwise, so primary cost of successfully doing business in pharma isn't drug
development.

3- who said anything about marginal? Profit is profit. What we are discussing
is the ethically justifiable profit rate. Pharma is one of the most profitable
industrial segment in the US, with approx 20% net rate of return. As per the
original article and related news stories show, these pharma companies are
pricing many life saving drugs beyond what many can afford. At what rate of
return is the pricing of life saving medicines no longer ethical? Please take
into account that this _is_ discussing how many people will be killed to
protect/improve profits.

~~~
drakonandor
3\. The problem is, if you say that Pharma profits s/b illegal, the companies
will simply stop risking money on figuring out new treatments. The European
governments ride their high horses and refuse to pay a fair price for private
pharm company inventions, BUT they also refuse to make meaningful
contributions themselves - which is WHY there's such a huge private pharma
industry in the first place.

------
drakonandor
There are generic Epi-pens, which are much, much cheaper. You -do not- have to
buy the name brand. Non-issue made big by the media and anti-capitalist hordes
expecting more free stuff.

~~~
frozenport
Is this true? See the first Google link:

[https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/epipen-
generic/](https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/epipen-generic/)

~~~
caminante
Parent comment's being sloppy. Parent meant to say that there are generic
EpiPen alternatives (epinephrine + delivery system) but there isn't a generic
EpiPen (name brand delivery system). Mylan claims that EpiPen (injector) has
superior features and is easier to use.

Here's the relevant quote from the article you linked:

    
    
      "The patents that currently prevent a generic form of EpiPen 
      are on the injector device itself, not the medicine inside. 
      So, while you can’t get a generic EpiPen, there are 
      alternatives that use epinephrine."

~~~
sndean
Yeah, Sigma and many other companies sell grams of epinephrine for ~$50. The
expensive part is getting it in your body.

Actually, the EpiPen only injects 0.3 mg. Or around 0.4 cents worth of
epinephrine if you could intake what Sigma is selling.

EDIT: I think I was off by a decimal place... Anyway, the epinephrine is more
or less free. Just paying for the device.

