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EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

nytimes.com

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Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#61

Post by Nullabillity »

maxerickson wrote: post #41
warfangle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forbes trots out an interesting figure: $2.6bn to win FDA approval for a new drug. That sounds like a lot! It also sounds like a number pulled from a hat. So I went looking. It's from a Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development study published in 2014 [0]. Which is, incidentally, supported financially by the pharmaceutical industry [1]. Even the published pdf is pretty lacking on actual data [2]. Because it's a…

The studies of marketing spending are usually just as disingenuous, reporting the "Selling, general and administrative" line item from annual reports as the amount spent on marketing. But that line item includes things like salaries and office space and such, things that the company has to do to sell products which are not advertising. Marketing spending is huge, but it undermines their message when they do that.

That seems pretty obviously correct. If you spend less on marketing then you, of course, also hire fewer marketers, leading to lower salaries and less required office space.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#62

Post by charlesdm »

squozzer wrote: post #33

>Mylan was actively involved in pushing a 2013 federal law encouraging schools nationwide to stock EpiPens. And the company takes credit for legislation in at least 10 states that require the product in hotels, restaurants and other places, and additional school-related legislation in nearly every state. It is also helping push legislation pending in Congress that would require epinephrine auto-injectors on all comme…

They probably conveniently forgot that..

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#63

Post by a_humean »

gizmodo59 wrote: post #43
bradleyjg wrote: post #19

This whole drug company argument -- that the only thing that really matters is what end users pay as a co-pay or co-insurance and that no one should care what insurance companies (including governments) pay -- is so breathtakingly bad I can only imagine it is in bad faith. Where do they expect us to believe the institutional payments are coming from, out of thin air?

One of the things I do not understand is, the explanation given is that Obamacare fixes the donut hole where people who are not enrolled in company sponsored/medicare could get insurance. This has just let the drug companies to raise the price without any backslash because the end user is "not" paying the price. However, the rising premiums and plans with high deductibles meant that the drugs are still not affordable…

What literately every other country does: Old fashioned price controls. Government as a buyer or as a regulator puts a cap on the price through a process of negotiation, and be willing to say no when the price is too high and the benefits are too low. The UK's NICE body regularly rejects new products if they don't represent value. New cancer drug that extends life by two months but costs £10k per pill with a course of treatmeant costing £100k; no thanks.

Its a market with inelastic demand - people will literately die if they don't buy the product. We, rightly, through regulation demand high quality assurance because if something is meant save someone from a quick death it better be reliable and not cause greater harm due to product defects. This means the entry barriers are quite high making competition difficult. Without price controls there is literately nothing but the CEO's conscience to keep from pushing the prices up. If the product will stop you from dying and nobody else can offer it, then there is basically no price you won't pay.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#64

Post by rayiner »

codegeek wrote: post #50
bradleyjg wrote: post #19

This whole drug company argument -- that the only thing that really matters is what end users pay as a co-pay or co-insurance and that no one should care what insurance companies (including governments) pay -- is so breathtakingly bad I can only imagine it is in bad faith. Where do they expect us to believe the institutional payments are coming from, out of thin air?

This. Exactly This. I am sick of hearing "oh you just pay $20 co-pay". No we don't. The real cost is much more and these pharmas and insurance companies know it. I know because I paid it for a family of 4. It costs $1500/Month for a decent plan that does not have high "out of pocket" costs (Read capped at $5000). So you pay $1500 per month and in worst case scenario, you can still pay $5000 out of pocket for a year I…

Transparent medical pricing is not possible so long as hospitals have an obligation to treat sick people whether or not they can pay. Hospitals heavily cross subsidize between insured, uninsured, and Medicare/Medicaid patients. As long as we put expectations on doctors and hospitals that compel them to do that, they cannot provide transparent pricing.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#65

Post by rayiner »

criddell wrote: post #60
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Any little price accountability will be lost when they convince that the federal government will need to pay for it.[1] I have to unfortunately be very vague because I don't remember the actual reference, but I remember a similar problem where the lobbyists didn't get what they wanted , and discreetly added it into some kind of unrelated bill in the midst of some fine print.[2] An excellent use for using some…

Maybe they should fold the R&D department into the marketing department. That's where all the drug company money is spent.

The fact that companies often spend more on marketing than R&D is irrelevant. The fact is that they spend billions on R&D. They have to recoup that. Presumably they don't spend money on marketing for shits and giggles--they spend how much they need to maximize revenue.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#66

Post by fjejfjrjdjc »

I've been waiting to see a neurologist for a serious and worsening vision problem since May. For those keeping track, that's four and a half months. So between these high drug prices and low healthcare availability, why exactly are we so afraid of single payer again?

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#67

Post by cylinder »

jackmott wrote: post #13
lettergram wrote: post #5

Having 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…

How much does your insurance plan cost you per year? If your employer pays it, ask them how much they have to pay. Part of the reason it is so expensive is because of monopolistic pricing on many drugs and treatments. You are paying way more than $100 Also you have to buy more than one because they expire.

You don't need to ask, it's on your W2.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#68

Post by tzs »

maxerickson wrote: post #42
anexprogrammer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one is making a generic, or more to the point doctors are prescribing "EpiPen" rather than "epinephrine autoinjector" being out of patent won't help. In the UK doctors had to switch to prescribing generics I think as far back as the 80s. Brands are now only prescribed, with a few exceptions, when it's something new enough to not have a generic yet. Before that lots of things were often prescribed by brand witho…

My experience in the US is that doctors prescribe drugs with generic alternatives anytime they can. I'm not sure if I've ever even taken a branded prescription pill.

Furthermore, even if the doctor writes the brand name drug on the prescription in the US and in Canada the pharmacist can substitute the generic, unless the doctor explicitly says no substitutions on the prescription.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#69

Post by ch4s3 »

whatshisface wrote: post #49
gizmodo59 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I do not understand is, the explanation given is that Obamacare fixes the donut hole where people who are not enrolled in company sponsored/medicare could get insurance. This has just let the drug companies to raise the price without any backslash because the end user is "not" paying the price. However, the rising premiums and plans with high deductibles meant that the drugs are still not affordable…

If only insurance companies had some sort of pressure to reduce costs and prices. Some sort of... market.. pressure...

How could that ever happen? Information asymmetry is as high as you could imagine. A doctor tells you to take x or you will die. X has a price set by Insurance Co. You have no medical training or pharmaceutical training, so how do you make a decision? If x is really required so that you don't die, demand is completely inelastic, you will literally pay anything you can afford, or you'll take out loans you can't afford. The only limiting factor on price would seem to be median income and credit availability.

Re: EpiPen Maker Quietly Steers Effort That Could Protect Its Price

#70

Post by codegeek »

rayiner wrote: post #64
codegeek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Exactly This. I am sick of hearing "oh you just pay $20 co-pay". No we don't. The real cost is much more and these pharmas and insurance companies know it. I know because I paid it for a family of 4. It costs $1500/Month for a decent plan that does not have high "out of pocket" costs (Read capped at $5000). So you pay $1500 per month and in worst case scenario, you can still pay $5000 out of pocket for a year I…

Transparent medical pricing is not possible so long as hospitals have an obligation to treat sick people whether or not they can pay. Hospitals heavily cross subsidize between insured, uninsured, and Medicare/Medicaid patients. As long as we put expectations on doctors and hospitals that compel them to do that, they cannot provide transparent pricing.

It is not possible in the current setup, yes. But if there was no insurance company to deal with for little things like X-Ray, that's the question. Why is transparent pricing so difficult for a hospital management to come up with if they don't have to answer to an insurance company OR even the Govt. for that matter ? Private Hospitals are mostly run like a business anyway so why not this part ? The status quo is not good enough and that is the point I am making.
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