EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
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Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#2Relevant post:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/09/14/government-h...
It's Forbes, but the argument is backed by the recent Harvard study:
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#3Rent-seekers seek rents, dog bites man, &c. &c.
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#4Does the FDA have the authority to deny marketing approval for minor improvements?
Mylan pushed generics off the market by making a better cap or something, the FDA should just say no, that improvement is nice but it isn't enough to give you exclusive marketing rights. If you want to incorporate it into your product, license it to your competitors for cheap.
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#5Having multiple deadly allergies and needing to purchase EpiPens regularly, their price doesn't seem outrageous to me.
I pay about $10 a pen, insurance pays about $100 per (even after the price increase). That being said, people rarely use this drug. $100 to save your life once a year or so kind of seems like a fair trade.
This seems more like the media is outraged as opposed to the country. All my friends don't even know about this price change, I only know about it because I read the news more often.
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#6It's not a "quietly effort", Martin even said that this would be the best course of action on live TV[0].
The government will spend more money, but the public will get it for free. Of course there's two side to every story, but I think I choose to believe Shkreli on this.
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#7Relevant post: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/09/14/government-h... It's Forbes, but the argument is backed by the recent Harvard study: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2545691
Waldmann/Ginn don't describe the FDA's complaints about the competitors, but it's probably: (1) a failure to validate claims or (2) insufficient design/manufacturing controls. IMO it's very unlikely that the FDA is engaged in protectionism of the sole manufacturer of this product.
> Most definitely, the solution is not more government controls through regulation.
I agree that we likely don't need any more regulation in this space. But it seems obvious to me that this issue is related to the overall shift lately. Employers are offering high-deductible insurance plans and employees are bearing a greater burden. The outrage over EpiPens is just another symptom of the US public clamoring for what they see as something that should be an entitlement. I don't know that I prefer it but it seems pretty clear to me that it's coming (within another generation or two at max).
The point about patent protection is pretty huge. I wonder: what net effects would there be to removing patents entirely? Would we end up with less ambitious products and services because designs would just get copied by the cheapest production centers? Could we/should we restrict patents among different industries?
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#8Relevant post: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/09/14/government-h... It's Forbes, but the argument is backed by the recent Harvard study: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2545691
It is not made at all clear if the government is truly granting that monopoly (and if they are, did Mylan bribe the government for that privilege somehow?) or if the competing products were truly not deemed safe or effective enough. Anyone have expert knowledge in that area?
The rest of the Forbes Articles seems like the usual delusional libertarian nonsense were they point out well known and obvious downsides of regulation while pretending no such downsides exist in deregulated markets (i.e., poor people would still die, even as prices drop, because some prices can only drop so much, and dangerous drugs brought to market by unscrupulous companies which are always common)
Also I like to remind the HackerNews community, that everything you use every day (transistors, integrated circuits, information theory, communications satellites) were invented in whole or part at a government mandated monopoly (Bell Labs). Of course there were conditions on that mandate, like not patenting what they invented.
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#9Having multiple deadly allergies and needing to purchase EpiPens regularly, their price doesn't seem outrageous to me. I pay about $10 a pen, insurance pays about $100 per (even after the price increase). That being said, people rarely use this drug. $100 to save your life once a year or so kind of seems like a fair trade. This seems more like the media is outraged as opposed to the country. All my friends don't even…
...says the guy with (good) insurance.
Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price
#10Relevant post: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/09/14/government-h... It's Forbes, but the argument is backed by the recent Harvard study: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2545691
They look at the symptom, and might fix one case of high prices with public pressure, legal threats, etc - but if the system is broken, then what good is that?
The question is not "why is this company so evil and greedy?" It's "why dont McDonald's hamburgers also cost $600?", and how do we make the market for drugs as competitive as for burgers?