Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#2I'm constantly surprised at how rare clandestine pharmaceuticals are.
Insulin for example is just worked up GMO yeast metabolites. That's not a particularly new or complex idea.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#3For a tl;dr, an article by a left leaning magazine saying that drug companies should make drugs and not be allowed to charge exorbitant prices or the government should get involved. Between that and the Trump bashing, shockingly original.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#4I'm constantly surprised at how rare clandestine pharmaceuticals are. Insulin for example is just worked up GMO yeast metabolites. That's not a particularly new or complex idea.
People just don't end up using clandestine pharmaceuticals. For example, fish oil as a dietary supplement is widely available and cheap at supermarkets, but people with a medical need for fish oil instead get Lovaza at many times the price. (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-prescripti...)
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#5For a tl;dr, an article by a left leaning magazine saying that drug companies should make drugs and not be allowed to charge exorbitant prices or the government should get involved. Between that and the Trump bashing, shockingly original.
I don't care what side of the political aisle you side with: It's insane that pharma companies and the healthcare system in general can hold people hostage. A friend of mine has Leukemia and takes Gleevec. Thankfully he has a good job because it costs something like $14,000/month. Yep, you read that right, $14,000. Yes it's covered by insurance. But that's not some magical money tree paying for it, we're collectively paying for it. My son's a type 1 diabetic and we hit our out of pocket max of about $9,200 every single year to pay for his insulin pump & glucose monitor supplies. An older family member of mine had cancer surgery - in the hospital for 5 days total and came out with a $150k bill.
America's great as long as you're not sick.
I lean left and right on many different issues, but holy shit America's healthcare system is ass-backwards compared to the rest of the world, which has figured out how to keep people alive if some unfortunate event happens without making them worry about deciding to pay for groceries or pay for medicine/healthcare. Anyone that thinks otherwise is brainwashed. Yes there are horror stories in other countries, but they don't include bankrupting people who were grossly overcharged for their care, or people rationing their medication because they can't pay for it. Fuck the current US healthcare system.
A single-payer system makes sense and it works everywhere else on the planet. The American people's refusal to get it reminds me of the not-invented-here syndrome we see in tech everyday.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#6Evergreening props up pharmaceutical profits but prevents lower-income populations from ever benefitting from the drugs. It keeps enormous swaths of the global population, without insurance or financial resources, from accessing lifesaving treatments.
It seems the pharmaceutical industry has largely forgotten why it makes drugs in the first place: to save lives.
No, not really. They are in it to make money.
We used to think of medication as something you took occasionally during a crisis. Now we take it as a given that a large percentage of the population will be on maintenance drugs for life.
Then we act all shocked at the fragility of the global pharmaceutical industry and the growing issue of antibiotic resistance.
But if you make some prosaic observation about this overall pattern, you can expect to be basically booed, not taken seriously as trying to talk about the problem in some sensible fashion.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#7For a tl;dr, an article by a left leaning magazine saying that drug companies should make drugs and not be allowed to charge exorbitant prices or the government should get involved. Between that and the Trump bashing, shockingly original.
I don't care what side of the political aisle you side with: It's insane that pharma companies and the healthcare system in general can hold people hostage. A friend of mine has Leukemia and takes Gleevec. Thankfully he has a good job because it costs something like $14,000/month. Yep, you read that right, $14,000. Yes it's covered by insurance. But that's not some magical money tree paying for it, we're collectively…
It's difficult to say whether other countries are just dealing with the financial side of this better or if the US is basically subsidizing the low prices elsewhere by paying the exorbitant prices here.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#8For a tl;dr, an article by a left leaning magazine saying that drug companies should make drugs and not be allowed to charge exorbitant prices or the government should get involved. Between that and the Trump bashing, shockingly original.
I don't care what side of the political aisle you side with: It's insane that pharma companies and the healthcare system in general can hold people hostage. A friend of mine has Leukemia and takes Gleevec. Thankfully he has a good job because it costs something like $14,000/month. Yep, you read that right, $14,000. Yes it's covered by insurance. But that's not some magical money tree paying for it, we're collectively…
> Yep, you read that right, $14,000
There's a lot wrong with US healthcare, but IMO a sticker price of $14,000 is actually a signal of a different problem, which is... that the prices are fake.
Nobody is actually expecting individuals to pay $14,000/mo. In the circumstance that an uninsured individual is on the drug, they'll be put on a payment plan which works out to an income-based-repayment: they know they won't get half a million from the patient, they'll get what (they think) the patient can afford.
For insured patients (realistically, almost everyone who could have afforded such a high sticker, because of employer-based healthcare) the sticker price is meaningless, because there's a negotiated rate between the insurance company and the provider. Likely negotiated inefficiently with each individual insurer, but the end money transfer a small fraction of $14,000.
I'm not trying to argue that there's not a ton of waste here. It's dumb and the lack of price visibility means nobody at any level makes informed choices. But the $14,000 price shouldn't be viewed as a real price in any meaningful sense.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#9I'm constantly surprised at how rare clandestine pharmaceuticals are. Insulin for example is just worked up GMO yeast metabolites. That's not a particularly new or complex idea.
Sometimes people in the US mail order drugs from other countries without a prescription. People sometimes also turn to non drug alternatives while getting called quacks and lumped in with antivaxxers, so a lot of them keep that kind of on the down low to protect themselves.
Re: Drugs for the People: Rethinking the global pharmaceutical supply chain
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't care what side of the political aisle you side with: It's insane that pharma companies and the healthcare system in general can hold people hostage. A friend of mine has Leukemia and takes Gleevec. Thankfully he has a good job because it costs something like $14,000/month. Yep, you read that right, $14,000. Yes it's covered by insurance. But that's not some magical money tree paying for it, we're collectively…
It's difficult to say whether other countries are just dealing with the financial side of this better or if the US is basically subsidizing the low prices elsewhere by paying the exorbitant prices here.
> or if the US is basically subsidizing the low prices elsewhere by paying the exorbitant prices here.
Nope, you're just being taken for a ride because they can. Remember that the biggest line item for pharmaceutical companies is their advertising budget, not their research budget.
Also, this kind of thinking is some weird sort of Stockholm Syndrome, you're basically trying to frame being taken advantage of as some sort of altruism.