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Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

nytimes.com

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Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#161

Post by markus2012 »

thinkcontext wrote: post #110
refurb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely untrue. Check out the cancer survival rates. The US exceeds most countries by far. Now, if you had said "Virtually all national healthcare system provide better care based on cost " I would have agreed with you.

There are many rankings that put the US healthcare system as a whole behind its economic peer countries whilst spending far more per capita. Example: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/20... Excluding 15% of the population from all but emergency care pretty much guarantees this outcome.

This. I used to buy breakfast from a small food place. The 21-ish cashier lady always gave me a nice 'good morning' and a smile.

She wasn't there one morning and I asked where she was. She died - something to do with her kidneys and she didn't have health insurance.

Now the US gets to statistically ignore her death and claim it provides excellent health care to its citizens?

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#162

Post by mvanvoorden »

mtgx wrote: post #103
jakobegger wrote: post #28

It should be pretty obvious by now that the pharma sector is completely out of control. Again and again I read about the rising cost of healthcare, how we can't afford to support an aging society, and now even "solved" problems are used to squeeze even more profits from those who can afford the least. And I'm not talking about the US, this is a world wide problem. Instead of making international treaties that make en…

Yet people are still quick to say "...but what about Big Pharma?" when there's a discussion about abolishing patents. I don't know if patents should be abolished completely, but if there's a discussion about a serious patent reform, we should stop considering pharmaceuticals as some kind of exception, and apply the new reform equally to everyone, instead of allowing exceptions for Big Pharma, or worse, watering down…

Exactly.

I don't understand why everybody's so afraid that without patents no medicine would be made anymore. On the contrary, it would force companies to work together and share the R&D, and would prevent the current inefficiency of multiple companies inventing the same wheel, doing the same studies, just because they all want to invent this medicine first.

Even better: with all the money that would be saved from not having all the bureaucracy around patents, governments could even set up their own research facilities and share all their findings with the public, making affordable and better medicine available for all mankind.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#163

Post by imdsm »

odonnellryan wrote: post #151
thomnottom wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I saw the headline I had a feeling it would be Turing. I was contacted by a recruiter last year and had a couple conversations about joining them as they were looking for an IT guy - the CIO was doing all of that work and they wanted someone else to be hands-on and eventually build a team. Sounded like a great opportunity and things were progressing. Then I bothered to Google them... Once I read up on Martin Shk…

How did they respond?

Maybe they bought his apartment and put his rent up by 5,455%

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#164

Post by fluidcruft »

makecheck wrote: post #69

One issue is that at some point "any profit" ceased to be considered a good outcome, and companies are now expected to do better and better when this makes very little sense. I imagine a simple solution would be a "reasonable profit limit" law. In other words, if there is evidence that your costs to manufacture are $X, your sale price ( especially in a monopoly scenario) ought to be strictly limited to some "reasonab…

I don't know what the answer is, but excess capital always demands more. When starved, the markets will feed wherever they can.

I will add my two cents, though. I think this is enabled by ACA and the drug companies are playing a dangerous game if they don't want to end up with Medicare-negotiated rates. Currently if you're uninsured or on a high-deductible plan you pay full price for drugs. If you've got a more traditional plan the insurance company and manufacturer play their typical monopoly money game. If you want more amo for the fire look into the price increases for EpiPen over the last few years.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#165

Post by drzaiusapelord »

bedhead wrote: post #159
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an economic and policy perspective, unfortunately, Turing is doing everything right. Makena is probably not a great comparison as its used for prevent early birth, which is something of an edge case for certain pregnant women, versus Daraprim, which is a more common drug. It is the only FDA approved drug for Toxoplasmosis. According to wikipedia: Up to half of the world's population is infected with toxoplasmosi…

I would disagree that many people are looking at this business plan with envy. CEO's of "real" pharma companies know this business model is possible, but no one bothers with it. I think this is partly out of ethical standards (yes, CEO's, even pharma CEO's, can possess this) and partly out of knowing the inevitable backlash makes it not worth it for the business and their personal reputation. Again, while KV isn't a…

Finding ways to make generics super-profitable is definitely common. Turing is, arguably, the ugliest of the bunch, but there's more than enough ugly to go around. Your mythical "honest and kindly pharma CEO who wants nothing but for everyone to have cheap drugs" doesn't exist. Its Shkreli's all the way down:

http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/06/allow-big-pharma-rip-us/

Bill Moyers: 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 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 and higher costs for you and me.

Another technique is for drug companies to continue to aggressively advertise prescription brands long after their 20 year patents have expired, so patients ask their doctors for them. Many doctors will comply.

America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.

A fourth 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. But here again, you and I pay. The tactic costs us an estimated $3.5 billion a year.

Europe doesn’t allow these sorts of payoffs, but they’re legal in the United States because the major drug makers and generics have fought off any legislative attempts to stop them.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#166

Post by imdsm »

danmaz74 wrote: post #138
bedhead wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the loophole though, the quantities are so small that realistically, no pharmaceutical company has the incentive to make their version of the drug, even at $750 per dose. There are still costs to making a drug that's off-patent, and sometimes the number of patients being treated is only in the double digits. Additionally, a competing drug released at say, $500 per dose would still be considered predatory anywa…

They should just allow importing drugs from other markets that have good enough quality standards - like the EU or Canada I guess. Problem solved.

Can this drug be reproduced by others? Is it simply a licensing issue?

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#167

Post by mason240 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #137
mason240 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are directly comparable. New drugs don't materialize out of thin air any more than the iPhones or any other applications of basic internet protocols did. Imagine if in the early 90s we had stiffed cellular phone technology because "only the rich have access to it" or general internet/network technology because "only banks and giant corporations have access to it." Thanks to capitalism, the technology is now so p…

New drugs come from universities, and from people motivated by the combination of public-spiritedness and academic success. Tax would pay their grants, tax would fund the trials, and tax would fund the production and packaging. Do roads and public water sanitation materialize out of thin air?

I'm confused why would think that roads (a basic network utility) are comparable to IT applications that use use a basic network utility. IT applications are to the internet what food delivery, personal transportation or freight transportation are to roads.

Researching drugs or developing IT applications are not basic commodities.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#168

Post by mason240 »

huxley wrote: post #126
mason240 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really shocking to such an anti-technological development comment on site about technological development. If the federal government had locked down all IT development in the 1980s as you proposing they do for pharmaceuticals, we wouldn't have this forum to comment on, much less the industry it is built around.

It's anti-corporate not anti-technological, not quite the same thing. After all the open and free Internet is the creation of government departments and government-funded universities. I don't believe that anything as extreme as the parent suggests is necessary but I do believe that we should have enforceable transparency in the pharmaceuticals industry R&D costs and/or decoupling the drug trials system so that the t…

>After all the open and free Internet

Yes, the dumb pipes of internet are.

The applications, like this website, that actually make use of those dumb pipes are not.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#169

Post by Grue3 »

assface wrote: post #52
antr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want my goverment helping people avoid health issues, rather than subsidising costs that could have been prevented. I've yet to see any one industry that has been nationalised and is performing better (in every sense) than the private sector.

> I've yet to see any one industry that has been nationalised as is performing better (in every sense) than the private sector. The nationalized health care programs seem to be performing better in other countries than ours.

Depends on the countries. Socialized healthcare in my country is notoriously terrible. Perhaps those other countries would be even better with privatized healthcare.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#170

Post by sehugg »

jerf wrote: post #42
tammer wrote: post #27

I used to work for a generics manufacturer, and indeed this was their MO. Seek out old drugs that sill have a very viable market but are under the radar of the big guys, undersell until they're the only supplier left, then jack up the price when patients have no choice. It's despicable and seems inevitable with the current regulation model.

At least in the US, that actually sounds like it's already illegal from general business regulation. As in, no new laws needed, get the ones we have enforced. Wouldn't be surprised you can already pierce the corporate veil without new laws too. This is not specifically in reply to the parent, but the point fits here: I'd observe that calling for more regulation or even outright nationalization to fix this, when it's…

Looks like the DOJ is very probably looking into antitrust violations in the generic drug industry: http://www.troutmansanders.com/the-dojs-generic-drug-antitru...

We'll see if any of this survives our current President's tenure, though.

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