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The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

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Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#81

Post by disordinary »

refurb wrote: post #74
disordinary wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely though the best marketing is the effectiveness of the product, if it's a good product then doctors will prescribe it. I don't know if it's true or not, but looking at US movies/tv shows it seems like everyones taking medication which I doubt they actually need. Here I don't know very many people who actively take regular medication, I know that people who move here complain at how doctors are stingy with presc…

Surely though the best marketing is the effectiveness of the product, if it's a good product then doctors will prescribe it. That's true for very few physicians. The ones that are leaders in their field and do research know the ins and outs of new drugs, but your average doctor knows very little.

But, they all have access to knowledge bases and information and guidelines provided by the government.

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#82

Post by mnm1 »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #10
torpfactory wrote: post #7

Here’s the rub with developing something as important as a medicine. If it works, people often _need_ it to prolong their life or improve their health. What drug companies are selling... isn’t like what other companies are selling. We ought not look at it through our normal understanding of goods in a free market. Take, for example, Sovaldi, a drug which cures Hepatits C. After discovering this drug and confirming it…

My coworker's dad had this happen to him. He got Hep C through a blood transfusion for a routine surgery. The insurance company waited until he was almost dead before starting the treatment. Now his liver is in such bad shape that if he has any alcohol it will kill him. Ridiculous, especially since they were going to pay for it anyway.

He's lucky they let him live. Sometimes the insurance companies don't let you live. Yet idiots talk about how the government will decide who lives and who dies if we have universal healthcare. These same idiots are clearly not aware that companies are making such life and death decisions every day for their customers, placing profit above human life constantly.

This is the kind of society half of America wants to build, one where the value of human lives is much less than the value of corporate profits. Well, we're already there and it's some fucking disgusting shit indeed. It's really fucking nasty when the insurance company says we're not paying for your dad's hospital stay anymore despite what the doctors want and then he dies the first full day he's out of the hospital. Might as well just let all the murderers out of jail. I'm sure they would if someone could profit from the ensuing mayhem like insurance companies currently profit off of murder.

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#83

Post by p1necone »

refurb wrote: post #66
disordinary wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. If the US had a centralised health system like other developed countries they would have the same bargaining power. In NZ we have Pharmac who bulk purchases drugs for the country, they can get good deals because they operate in a free market and can play the pharma companies off each other. Don't blame other countries for your own governments inability to bargain. Pharma companies still have patents…

it's not about negotiation at all. NZ has a population of 5M. The largest private health insurer in the US, United Health, cover 40M people. They can, and do, negotiate drug prices. Who do you think would get a better deal?

We don't need to speculate on who gets a better deal, we can already see that people in NZ pay far, far (like an order of magnitude) less for drugs.

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#84

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #66
disordinary wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. If the US had a centralised health system like other developed countries they would have the same bargaining power. In NZ we have Pharmac who bulk purchases drugs for the country, they can get good deals because they operate in a free market and can play the pharma companies off each other. Don't blame other countries for your own governments inability to bargain. Pharma companies still have patents…

it's not about negotiation at all. NZ has a population of 5M. The largest private health insurer in the US, United Health, cover 40M people. They can, and do, negotiate drug prices. Who do you think would get a better deal?

[deleted]

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#85

Post by SilasX »

khazhoux wrote: post #19

Crazy idea: all pharmaceutical research should be publicly funded and publicly-owned. No private ownership of drug patents, period. "But this will disincentive research!" Maybe. Or, tax people more in order to fund the research. The tax revenue would go directly to researcher salary, equipment, expenses. Even a large tax increase can't be worse than today, where people have to pay huge $$$ anyway, of which a large cu…

Would you advocate that for every other technology? Why not?

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#86

Post by SilasX »

danShumway wrote: post #20
tomohawk wrote: post #4

One of the biggest reasons is that the US essentially subsidizes drugs for many other countries, such as Canada, that impose price controls, and threaten to allow other manufacturers to provide the drugs in their countries if the companies don't accept the imposed price. This enables these countries to get access to new medicine without paying the cost of developing the new medicine. Its time to end the trade war on…

This argument always strikes me as kind of odd. As far as I can tell, it boils down to "other countries like Canada are better negotiators than us, and our companies give them better prices." But if that's the case, it just seems like really good evidence that squeezing drug companies and making aggressive demands drives down drug costs and encourages them to move R&D costs out of the country. Why wouldn't the US be…

What if you framed it in terms of the damage Walmart (arguably) does to markets? I mean, they force suppliers to take losses “because of their negotiating power”, right? So maybe every retailer should band together with them and force all supplier profit margins to the same bare minimum for all products. Otherwise you’re leaving money “on the table”, right?

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#87

Post by kirubakaran »

rayiner wrote: post #61
mikeash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how comparing it to the GDP of small foreign countries adds context. The important context is what I stated: it’s about $300 per person. That means that it’s a very small portion of our ~$10,000/year per capita health care expenditures. Anyone who knows how much their health insurance costs per year can immediately see how much of that funds their share of pharma R&D. The answer will almost always…

Pharmaceutical expenditures are about $1,000 per capita. Turning $1,000 of revenue into $300 in R&D compares very favorably to other tech industries.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... it is close to $10k, not $1k.

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#88

Post by aaavl2821 »

jerrysievert wrote: post #14
aaavl2821 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it costs aver $2.7B to get a drug approved based on the most accepted estimates. biggest cost is cost of failure. r&d is hard, highly regulated and expensive

I'm not arguing that it isn't expensive, but when, for instance Johnson & Johnson spends $8.2B/yr on R&D, and spends $17.5B that same year on marketing those same drugs, it's hard to argue that the cost of R&D is the major issue here. edited to add: especially when you look at the US R&D tax credit, available under section 41 of the tax code.

as another commenter said, that marketing spend also includes JNJs massive consumer products business and med device business

Also, pharma increasingly buys new products through acquisitions rather than develop them in house these days. So you have to look at the balance sheet, not just the p&l. Note that JNJ spent $30B buying actelion last year among other smaller acquisitions

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#89

Post by brushyourbat »

We have compulsory copyright licensing for sound recordings - if you pay the statutory license fee (9.1 cents per song or 1.75 cents per minute) to the original publisher, you can press records of their song, whether or not the original publisher approves.

Why not have compulsory patent licensing for drugs?

Re: The Best Fix for American Drug Prices Is Already on the Books

#90

Post by throwaway84742 »

booleandilemma wrote: post #30
kemiller2002 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My coworker's dad had this happen to him. He got Hep C through a blood transfusion for a routine surgery. The insurance company waited until he was almost dead before starting the treatment. Now his liver is in such bad shape that if he has any alcohol it will kill him. Ridiculous, especially since they were going to pay for it anyway.

Doctors should be the ones making the medical decisions, not the faceless employees working with spreadsheets at insurance companies. Our system is backwards and needs to be overhauled.

Seems like you wouldn’t like universal healthcare then, where such things happen to _everybody_.
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