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How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

theatlantic.com

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Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#121

Post by naasking »

scotty79 wrote: post #119
naasking wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When faster CPUs will be very hard to invent but essential to human survival? Maybe. I'd say we're already at the point that they are essential to our survival, at least for societies as they currently exist. CPUs are also hard to invent, and hard to progress already, requiring hundreds of millions of dollars for each new iteration. > Business is great at researching processes of manufacturing. Not so good when it…

> Most of the things we currently use were invented by businesses, or by someone who then started a business to sell it. Yes. I don't say business is useless when it comes to research. Business is great at researching how to tune the production process so that the thing they went to produce is affordable for as many people as possible. Every invention goes through business to reach you. But it usually starts at the u…

> 2. Inventing drugs gets more expensive.

1. You're assuming drug research gets more expensive, but in some ways it actually becomes easier, ie. with better computers we can ensure some clinical trials have a higher success rate with computer modelling.

2. Your original claim was that they become unreasonably expensive, which is a stronger claim than just expensive. Furthermore, this expense would still be incurred by any other entity that does this research, so you're not saving anything in the end.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#122

Post by bradleyjg »

rejschaap wrote: post #90
bradleyjg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health insurance, despite the name, isn’t insurance. Insurance is paying small sums, at EV negative cost, to mitigate the risk from a rare but very expensive cost. Health insurance isn’t underwritten and pays out for routine expenses. It isn’t insurance.

I think you are trying to say it is more than an insurance, because it also pays out for routine expenses?

No, it’s not a strict superset because of the underwriting issue.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#123

Post by ikeboy »

ineedasername wrote: post #118
cosmie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But marginal cost for whom? The entity manufacturing the drug, the entity that holds the inventory, the entity that owns the IP, or the entity that the pharmaceutical rep works for? Any sufficiently large corporation is more likely than not to be an amalgamation of interconnected subsidiaries, for a wide variety of purposes. Once you're at that stage, there's a lot of room to get creative with how you structure intra…

Good points, they can just shuffle the money from one balance sheet to another, but then get to deduct the whole thing anyway.

That's not how accounting works.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#124

Post by scotty79 »

naasking wrote: post #121
scotty79 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the things we currently use were invented by businesses, or by someone who then started a business to sell it. Yes. I don't say business is useless when it comes to research. Business is great at researching how to tune the production process so that the thing they went to produce is affordable for as many people as possible. Every invention goes through business to reach you. But it usually starts at the u…

> 2. Inventing drugs gets more expensive. 1. You're assuming drug research gets more expensive, but in some ways it actually becomes easier , ie. with better computers we can ensure some clinical trials have a higher success rate with computer modelling. 2. Your original claim was that they become unreasonably expensive , which is a stronger claim than just expensive. Furthermore, this expense would still be incurred…

1. I think I never seen any claim that inventing new drugs gets less expensive although I agree that's theoretically intermittently possible untill the fact that we are running out of substances to try overcomes cost benefits of given technological breakthrough.

2. If something gets constantly more expensive it will eventually become unreasonably expensive for any chosen definition of unreasonable. Unless general wealth of human race grows faster than cost of research which doesn't look plausible.

What I'm saying in the end is that the cost will be higher if the company is involved because companies are so risk averse that they demand insanely high potential rewards to take the risk. The other thing I'm saying is that if you are going to fund reserach with drug sales but in the end will have to subsidize drug buyers from taxes (because they can't afford meds) it may be just better to fund research from taxes directly and charge for drugs only as much as their manufacturing costs as it is now in case of generics.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#125

Post by thewhitetulip »

vonmoltke wrote: post #109
thewhitetulip wrote: post #51

I saw a show earlier this week, an insulin shot costs 2$ in rest of the world and 100+$ in the US. Isn't this loot?

> I saw a show earlier this week, an insulin shot costs 2$ in rest of the world and 100+$ in the US. "Insulin" is not a singular thing. For various reasons, lower-cost insulins are difficult to impossible to find in the US, which is a problem. Also, some insulins are $2/dose in some parts of the world . Most insulins in the developed world are significantly more expensive than that (to whomever is paying for it), tho…

Yes, US users pay a lot for insulin. Price has shot up from single digit dollar to 3 digit from 70s to today

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#126

Post by berbec »

stevenwoo wrote: post #10
berbec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the change in US law allowing direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription-only medication. Doctors are told not to write scripts to family, friends and themselves, so how the hell can I make an informed decision about my cancer treatment using a 30 second infomercial?

Doesn't this boil down to Citizens United - if corporations are allowed to use money as they see fit because money is roughly equivalent to free speech then all three branches of government are responding to the entities with the most of it - in this case big pharma.

I am not making any reference to Citizens United. This started in the US in 1981 and there was FDA guidance issued in '85. "The FDA said in 1985 that drug makers could air ads, but they also had to follow rigid rules for disclosing side effects and other information." [1]

1: https://www.statnews.com/2015/12/11/untold-story-tvs-first-p...

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#127

Post by ourmandave »

refurb wrote: post #93
ourmandave wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except for Daraprim which has been off patent for 62 years. It went from $13.50 to $750 overnight because it only has one producer that decided to raise the price 5500%. https://www.vox.com/2015/9/22/9373557/daraprim-competitor-tu... And there's no generic insulin sold in the US, even though it was discovered 90+ years ago. https://www.npr.org/2015/03/22/394634923/90-years-after-its-...

Exceptions don’t make the rule. For the vast,vast majority of drugs they are dirt cheap once the patent runs out.

But exceptions are the point.

We live with a system that allows exceptions that manifest as the Pharmabro.

My power bill doesn't randomly jump 5000% from last month.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#128

Post by DennisP »

bradleyjg wrote: post #122
rejschaap wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are trying to say it is more than an insurance, because it also pays out for routine expenses?

No, it’s not a strict superset because of the underwriting issue.

Even without underwriting it's still insurance, which is "a practice or arrangement by which a company or government agency provides a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a premium" according to Google's dictionary.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#129

Post by bradleyjg »

DennisP wrote: post #128
bradleyjg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not a strict superset because of the underwriting issue.

Even without underwriting it's still insurance, which is "a practice or arrangement by which a company or government agency provides a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a premium" according to Google's dictionary.

If there was a soup kitchen that charged something, maybe on a sliding scale, but not nearly enough to cover costs, it would meat the dictionary definition of a "restaurant". Calling it that would nonetheless be misleading.

Re: How expensive do prescription drugs need to be to fund research?

#130

Post by DennisP »

bradleyjg wrote: post #129
DennisP wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without underwriting it's still insurance, which is "a practice or arrangement by which a company or government agency provides a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a premium" according to Google's dictionary.

If there was a soup kitchen that charged something, maybe on a sliding scale, but not nearly enough to cover costs, it would meat the dictionary definition of a "restaurant". Calling it that would nonetheless be misleading.

Yes but in this case, virtually everyone agrees with the precise dictionary definition of insurance and uses it in daily conversation all the time. Very few would agree with you that health insurance without underwriting should not be called insurance. Political discourse, everyday conversation, and the law itself still call it insurance.

(And while I don't think you meant the comparison this literally, I'll point out that health insurance companies do cover their costs. In fact, they're generally quite profitable.)

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