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Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#11

Post by gambiting »

My father has been on Glivec for the last 7 years, and this is the only reason he is still alive - when he was diagnosed with GIST doctors told him he would have 2 years left at best, but decided to add him to clinical trials of Glivec for GIST patients. The whole treatment is paid for by our national health care, I believe it costs....$3000 per month, that's how much a single box of Glivec costs here and my dad has to take a pill every day so he gets a new box every month.

Not really related, but I wanted to mention this, since some people really want to show Novartis as evil, and while they probably charge too much for their drugs in the US, their medicine actually saves lives, my dad being the best example of that.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#12

Post by rohamg »

belorn wrote: post #2

> the patentability of modifications to existing drugs under Indian law A key point here is that the original drug itself was patented, and has expired. The issue that the Indian court had with Gleevec patent application is that it only rearranged the molecule in a new crystal pattern, ie Polymorphism. The Indian court consider polymorphism to be a well known technique when working with drugs, and just applying polym…

This. The US patent system rewards the same kind of "innovation" as the financial sector did pre-subprime. Look at the introduction rate of new drugs vs derivatives of old (and about to expire) drugs over the past decades to see what I mean. The argument that "if drugs were cheaper (=they saved more lives) pharma r&d would crumble" is facetious and speaks volumes about the priorities of the individual making the argument.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#13

Post by forrestthewoods »

snippyhollow wrote: post #6
nhashem wrote: post #4

This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation. Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that." And what option does the pharmaceutical company have? Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly. Because healthcare payments are not f…

US firms are investing less in R&D relatively to their rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_... than their French/UK (publicly-funded healthcare) counterparts. The US are not "subsidizing it for poor countries" more than other rich countries. The truth in the case you're making is not specific to healthcare and is that "research (private and public) of rich countries that can afford it" be…

From that list 48.17% of all health care R&D spend is by US based companies. Sounds like the US is subsidizing the world to me.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#14

Post by joelthelion »

snippyhollow wrote: post #6
nhashem wrote: post #4

This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation. Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that." And what option does the pharmaceutical company have? Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly. Because healthcare payments are not f…

US firms are investing less in R&D relatively to their rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_... than their French/UK (publicly-funded healthcare) counterparts. The US are not "subsidizing it for poor countries" more than other rich countries. The truth in the case you're making is not specific to healthcare and is that "research (private and public) of rich countries that can afford it" be…

The French/UK/Swiss pharmas also count on the US market as a large part of their revenue. The incorporation country of these multinationals is irrelevant.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#15

Post by alive-or-not »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #13
snippyhollow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US firms are investing less in R&D relatively to their rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_... than their French/UK (publicly-funded healthcare) counterparts. The US are not "subsidizing it for poor countries" more than other rich countries. The truth in the case you're making is not specific to healthcare and is that "research (private and public) of rich countries that can afford it" be…

From that list 48.17% of all health care R&D spend is by US based companies. Sounds like the US is subsidizing the world to me.

Health care R&D is extremely expensive in US (insanely high executive salaries, "lobbing" expenses, etc.). US companies may spend as much as the rest of the world, but deliver a lot less innovation.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#16

Post by tuananh »

gambiting wrote: post #11

My father has been on Glivec for the last 7 years, and this is the only reason he is still alive - when he was diagnosed with GIST doctors told him he would have 2 years left at best, but decided to add him to clinical trials of Glivec for GIST patients. The whole treatment is paid for by our national health care, I believe it costs....$3000 per month, that's how much a single box of Glivec costs here and my dad has…

i don't know about American but when it comes to health-related issues, people in my country tends not to bargain about the price. That's least of their worry as long as they can afford it.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#18

Post by mansigandhi »

nhashem wrote: post #4

This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation. Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that." And what option does the pharmaceutical company have? Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly. Because healthcare payments are not f…

> The US is effectively subsidizing advanced healthcare for every other country in the world.

That's a very misinformed statement.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#19

Post by bergheim »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #13
snippyhollow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US firms are investing less in R&D relatively to their rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_... than their French/UK (publicly-funded healthcare) counterparts. The US are not "subsidizing it for poor countries" more than other rich countries. The truth in the case you're making is not specific to healthcare and is that "research (private and public) of rich countries that can afford it" be…

From that list 48.17% of all health care R&D spend is by US based companies. Sounds like the US is subsidizing the world to me.

By that logic, you should add the population for the other countries and compare to the US, which is about 345m compared to the US, 315m - which doesn't sound like the US is "subsidizing the world" to me.. Although I guess a big chunk of that revenue probably comes from the US.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#20

Post by rdl »

objclxt wrote: post #10
BerislavLopac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the problem in the US is in the lack of the balance between the producers and customers of medicine. In Canada, as you point out, there is a state monopoly on the purchasing side, but there is a similar monopoly on the selling side, in the form of medical patents. In India, there isn't a monopoly on either side. In the US, you have no monopoly on the healthcare side, but the drug companies have a monopoly o…

> In the US, you have no monopoly on the healthcare side, but the drug companies have a monopoly on the drugs they produce. In a way there is a monopoly on the healthcare side in the US, but it only impacts a certain segment of the population. Medicare is able to negotiate significant discounts on the cost of healthcare compared to private insurers precisely because for so many people it is the de facto provider. The…

Medicare/Medicaid are specifically not allowed to bargain on drug prices, though. They are a monopsony for hospital/doctor services, with full pricing power, for the old and poor, but pay market prices for drugs by law.
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