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Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#211

Post by intended »

bhb916 wrote: post #159
intended wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait - so you want to take the at risk group and give them a drug that failed human safety tests? EDIT: I am trying to say that while obesity is 'bad', giving them a drug that adds to their risk levels is not a solution. If you are still pro your position, bear in mind that you are now throwing dice and hoping that: (people who improve) >= (people who suffer + nothing happens). Are you qualified to play dice with peo…

He's not advocating giving drugs to anyone, what he advocates is letting the at risk group decide whether or not they want to roll the dice with their own lives. You advocate forbidding this to happen. In other words you're hoping that: (people who suffer + nothing happens) > (people who improve). If you're wrong, then preventing the release of the drug is literally killing people.

Uh. You are taking the opposite position on a random event. It's still a bet.

And we have already gone past "letting the at risk group decide for themselves." it's hard to be succinct and explain the many reasons why we dont use that particular system when it comes to medication.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#212

Post by intended »

refurb wrote: post #185
intended wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait - so you want to take the at risk group and give them a drug that failed human safety tests? EDIT: I am trying to say that while obesity is 'bad', giving them a drug that adds to their risk levels is not a solution. If you are still pro your position, bear in mind that you are now throwing dice and hoping that: (people who improve) >= (people who suffer + nothing happens). Are you qualified to play dice with peo…

One of the reasons why the FDA rejected Qnexa was that one of the components in the drug was thought to cause cleft palates in babies born to mothers who take the drug. Mind you, this drug is already approved for use in humans. The FDA made the call that preventing cleft palates in babies (mind you the company offered to restrict the label to "non-child bearing women") was more important that reducing levels of obesi…

Did a quick search, 3 drugs were removed and of them 1 had abused rumors in rat trials, the other increased risk for heart attacks and the final was qnexa. Tht was in 2010.

From what it looks like the FDA is going to renew qnexa by April 2012.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#213

Post by nknight »

jerf wrote: post #204
ori_b wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money needs to come from somewhere. I'd rather not have the costs concentrated on the sick. We do have plenty of money to fund everything we need if we pull our military out of most foreign countries. I believe that Nasa's annual budget, for example, is roughly the same cost as 1 day in Iraq [citation needed].

In 2011, we spent 700 billion on the defense department, and we spent 1,205 billion dollars more than we took in. It's time to stop thinking of the government as a free money fountain. I'd suggest it's much cheaper to look into how we could reduce the regulations making it so expensive, rather than throw government money at a problem of the government's creation. At the point where we are seriously talking about the…

> In 2011, we spent 700 billion on the defense department, and we spent 1,205 billion dollars more than we took in.

We also took in hundreds of billions less than we would have if not for the avoidable economic implosion and earlier ill-advised tax cuts.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#214

Post by [deleted] »

JunkDNA wrote: post #36

I worked in the drug R&D business for over 8 years. I still follow the industry closely. Some things always get lost in these discussions. First, manufacturing an existing drug is absurdly cheap. Modern industrial chemistry ensures this for all small molecule drugs (note that this is not the same case for the "biologics" which are often fiendishly difficult to make). Almost all the cost in a drug is the manufacturer…

[deleted]

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#215

Post by ekianjo »

intended wrote: post #148
refurb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight loss drugs. Three new products were rejected by the FDA last year. Sure these drugs had risks, but what's the cost of obesity in terms of medical costs? At this point in time the FDA has incredibly high standards of safety for weight loss drugs and not without reason. But what are the costs of the 40% of obese Americans who will get diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc, etc?

Wait - so you want to take the at risk group and give them a drug that failed human safety tests? EDIT: I am trying to say that while obesity is 'bad', giving them a drug that adds to their risk levels is not a solution. If you are still pro your position, bear in mind that you are now throwing dice and hoping that: (people who improve) >= (people who suffer + nothing happens). Are you qualified to play dice with peo…

The discussion should not be about "efficacy and no risks", but the comparison of risks versus the benefits the drug can provide. That should be the only rationale when you go on treatment: understanding the risks on each side. Just like cancer drugs are usually not harmless (side effects can be pretty nasty), they can make you live longer than if you go untreated.

The communication to the patient should be fully transparent, and it should be up to the patient to choose what they want to do, not just regulators.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#216

Post by danssig »

nickik wrote: post #35
danssig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I no longer care much about the "they're a business, they're allowed to make a profit" line - of course it's still true, and of course they are, I disagree here. Pure laissez faire capitalism works no better than pure communism or socialism. You need a mix of both to have a functioning economy and IMO it should be pretty clear at this point that health care works best (cheapest and most effective) on the socialism…

So if the businesses make no more money how will the invest in R&D for new medication? Im not advocating pure capitalism but businesses have to make some profit. I agree that the more socialsist systems work better atm but this does not include development of new medication and equipment. Would you want that in gov hands too?

>Im not advocating pure capitalism but businesses have to make some profit.

Agreed. Which is why health care shouldn't be a business. It leads to perverse profit incentives and it's an inelastic market in any case (you can't "opt out" of care for a heart attack).

>Would you want that in gov hands too?

Not in US government hands, no. But more competent governments could certainly handle this via grants (in fact, I think even the US does this to some degree), etc.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#217

Post by danssig »

tomjen3 wrote: post #123
danssig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I no longer care much about the "they're a business, they're allowed to make a profit" line - of course it's still true, and of course they are, I disagree here. Pure laissez faire capitalism works no better than pure communism or socialism. You need a mix of both to have a functioning economy and IMO it should be pretty clear at this point that health care works best (cheapest and most effective) on the socialism…

>I disagree here. Pure laissez faire capitalism works no better than pure communism or socialism. Relevant citation please.

You're not going to like this [1] source, but it's very well cited. To my knowledge, Chile is the only time true free market capitalism was ever tried anywhere in the world.

[1] http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/faq/sp001547/secC11.html

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#218

Post by jbooth »

ekianjo wrote: post #208
jbooth wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are a lot of safety-related things because we keep getting a vioxx every so often that's killing people. I'm not willing to increase my chance of getting killed by medicine on behalf of someone else's profit margin. They have a big, powerful lobby, they should suggest process improvements. And make some on their end, as well, nobody's charging them billions in fees, they spend that money on the typical bi…

Note that we still got a Vioxx on the market even though we had those tons of regulations in place. There was a similar scandal in France recently with another drug called Mediator. Truth is, regulations do not replace ethics - Corporations knowlingly allowing patients to be hurt should be punished accordingly - there is no need to inflate regulations further and further, this has never solved the problem, just like…

The analogous argument is that because crime still happens, we should abolish the police force.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#219

Post by snowwrestler »

nknight wrote: post #56
JunkDNA wrote: post #36

I worked in the drug R&D business for over 8 years. I still follow the industry closely. Some things always get lost in these discussions. First, manufacturing an existing drug is absurdly cheap. Modern industrial chemistry ensures this for all small molecule drugs (note that this is not the same case for the "biologics" which are often fiendishly difficult to make). Almost all the cost in a drug is the manufacturer…

> You don't need to be an industry expert to grok that those numbers are wildly unsustainable. Tell you what. When these companies stop being the most profitable in America, or even just when their EPS starts declining, I'll believe you.

Most profitable? Citation needed. Profit margins are higher in the tech industry--companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google all have higher margins than pharma. In terms of nominal profits, pharma does not come close to the oil and gas industry.

Re: Indian Government uses special powers to slash cancer drug price by 97%

#220

Post by vannevar »

streptomycin wrote: post #210
vannevar wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's almost impossible to rig the statistics. I would argue that it's actually impossible to economically conduct sufficient studies to reliably predict the efficacy and long term safety of drugs in the general population. And you're right, every drug on the market has passed Phase 3 trials because they're cherrypicked . A big drug company knows how many drugs it needs in production to ensure that some perce…

That's not true. Drug companies can't just cherry pick trials to report to the FDA. The FDA is involved from very early on in the process. Furthermore, if the drug company is doing suspicious things like shutting down trials, the FDA will be even more strict in their requirements for approval.

The drug companies don't need to shut down trials, they just need to spread their bets sufficiently to ensure there are some winners. Sort of a VC model, except they have a clearer victory condition in FDA approval. Once a drug is approved, the pharmaceutical equivalent of retail shelf space is assured and the marketing machine can kick in to guarantee profitability. And the FDA has little incentive to prevent marginally effective drugs from reaching the market as long as no better alternative treatment exists. Which it won't, if big drug companies can keep churning out pharmaceutical 'hits' without much regard for efficacy. The system is a self-sustaining money machine for them.
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