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Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

latimes.com

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Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#21

Post by mark_edward »

fckyrdumb wrote: post #20
antisthenes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adrenaline was synthesized over 100 years ago. Most of Mylan's drug portfolio has come from acquisitions of other companies. They sell branded drugs that have been synthesized years ago by other people. The only R&D this company is doing is who to bribe in Congress and how to extort more money from the American public. True free markets at work.

Free markets? You mean government enforced violence. True free markets would allow anyone to manufacture an epi pen copy without being sued into oblivion while having state thugs seize your property.

any competent entrepreneur would buy or build his own government to do this.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#22

Post by drakonandor »

jbob2000 wrote: post #15
drakonandor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bullshit. Insulin was developed in Canada. Viagra was developed in the UK. Sure, 50% of the worlds pharma is developed in the US (as of 2010, it hovered between 30-40% until then), but most of the stuff people need has already been developed. So no, the majority of drugs that people use have not been developed by the American government.

The motivation for this article is the Epi-pen, so let's look at that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine_autoinjector

Made in Good Old USA, based of USA Army prototypes.

"But she also acknowledged that high retail prices of EpiPens in the United States effectively subsidize the cost of the devices when they are sold in Europe, at just $100 or $150. Many of the countries there have government-run health-care systems that limit drug prices charged by manufacturers, unlike the U.S."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/25/mylan-expands-epipen-cost-cut...

Oh, look at that, looks like the rest of the world -is- taking advantage.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#23

Post by jgeada »

danielweber wrote: post #19
jgeada wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since a significant number of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are not American ( http://blog.proclinical.com/who-are-the-top-10-pharmaceutica... ), 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... ) I also doubt that research costs are as high as people claim. It is much…

> 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…

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.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#24

Post by sndean »

caminante wrote: post #10
frozenport wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true? See the first Google link: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/epipen-generic/

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,…

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.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#25

Post by 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.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#26

Post by drakonandor »

jgeada wrote: post #23
danielweber wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

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.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#28

Post by tamana »

fspeech wrote: post #25

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 product…

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

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#29

Post by burkaman »

drakonandor wrote: post #7

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.

I think people often try to avoid the generic version because teachers and counselors and others tend to be trained specifically with Epi-pens. You don't want people to be reading instructions when you need help.

Re: Drug companies spend millions to keep charging high prices

#30

Post by fspeech »

tamana wrote: post #28
fspeech wrote: post #25

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 product…

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

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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