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

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

#81

Post by carbocation »

dontstealmyname wrote: post #74
coldtea wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What high cost? US companies pay more money for advertising than for creating the drug. Add other regulation and inefficiencies, and subsidized research would work with 1/10 the money. Not to mention that because of the commercialization of medicine, tons of research is for BS like Viagra and other such drugs (like the tons of stupid feel-good "energy" drugs, so that your boss can squeeze even more overtime out of yo…

Viagra was not initially being developed as an erection pill it was a heart medication (I think) but turned out to be better at causing erections so they ran with that.

Sildenafil (Viagra) was developed to treat hypertension and angina. It had little effect, but was found to assist with maintaining erections, so it was further developed for that purpose. Later it was discovered to be effective for pulmonary hypertension and is approved for that use, as well.

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

#82

Post by twoodfin »

venomsnake wrote: post #7
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…

According to Ben Goldcare (Bad Science, Bad Pharma) the companies spend around 12% of their budgets on R&D and 30% on marketing ... so the R&D is the easy part to be funded - just outlaw the direct marketing to consumers and doctors and the companies can spend 3 times as much on R&D with no problems.

No problems? Why wouldn't your genius idea work in every sector of the economy? Surely Apple and Samsung could sell more, better phones if they didn't conduct market research or run ads...

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

#83

Post by ewoodrich »

adventured wrote: post #32
alive-or-not wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see any evidence to support your very dramatic claim. Quite the opposite. From early chemotherapy on to the human genome, stem cells, the Allen Brain Atlas, The Gates Foundation, modern biotechnology, organ regrowth, medical devices like the CT scanner (half invented in the US) or the da Vinci system of robotic surgery, etc etc etc the modern healthcare / pharma / biotech world owes a spectacularly massive de…

"The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint.[1] The first official funding for the Project originated with the Department of Energy’s Office of Health and Environmental Research, headed by Charles DeLisi, and was in the Reagan Administration’s 1987 budget submission to the Congress.[2] It subsequently passed both Houses. The Project was planned for 15 years.[3] "

I don't see how the HGP was unrelated to government investment...

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

#84

Post by nodeless »

scotty79 wrote: post #50

> Rejecting the Gleevec patent application is not the only step that the Indian government has taken to circumvent patents on cancer drugs. It's not circumventing the patent. It's not granting the patent. People think that patent is some kind of innate natural right and if you manage to trick one country into giving you monopoly you are somehow in the right now and other countries that don't see the point of giving y…

Very very well said.

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

#85

Post by belorn »

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.

It should also be mentioned (since we are talking about statistics here), that 1/3 of the total US medical research spending is from taxes (congress) and has been consistently been so for 20-30 years. That money has no connections with the current health care system, or insurance companies and is just pure tax money sent into research.

From those 1/3, about 95% of all core research is supported, and around 80% of all research into medical conditions that are life threatening.

Health care system, insurance companies and patents are for everything else...

*The 95% and 80% is number from a talk, and for the moment I can't find references. What I could find is statements about majority funding is used on basic research (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=205216 and http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c5/c5s1.htm). In the future I will hold off on those number in comments until I got direct sources to use with them.

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

#86

Post by gambiting »

Retric wrote: post #79
gambiting wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you opened your own company you would have to play by the same rules. Even if you wanted to sell your product cheaper, you would not be able to due to obligations to your shareholders,which have a legal binding. Is the system evil? Yes. Are you evil for following the rules? No. And as for the patents - how would you deal with a problem that after spending millions on research somebody could copy you and sell the s…

There is no legal requirement to maximize profits, just avoid doing anything stupid. Aka they can donate 5% of total annual profits to charity but not 50%. Drug companies often donate large quantities of medicine to 3rd world countries because it's vary cheap for them to do so and the management team is not evil.

There is a legal requirement that you can never take a decision that's bad for the company. If there is an official analysis made that shows that you could make more money by selling your product at 3x the price and people would still buy it, and you ignore such a report, then it's a very good reason to get you kicked out of the management board.

And yes, companies donate money/products to charity, but only when they have "spare" money, so money they have no current use for, no ongoing investment plans and so on. And most of the time, giving money to charity is written off as a PR expense, improving the company image by donating to the poor. So yes, there are ways to spend money for noble causes if you want to, but you can't knowingly make a decision that would make the company make less money.

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

#87

Post by arethuza »

electromagnetic wrote: post #66
coldtea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the European countries had to had to pay for their own defense? The European countries pay big bucks for their own defense, thank you very much. And the US doesn't provide any defense at all. It merely uses its pressure to get the European countries to participate in its inane crusades and wars, from Korea to Iraq, which are for it's own interests. Plus, defense against what? The only thing that brings any…

I think when the UK paid 1/20th of the cost to R&D Trident 2, but got 1/5 of the orders, I'd say yeah that was pretty heavily subsidized by the US to have an ally country with stealth-nuclear capabilities. I also think you have absolutely no clue who international politics works by your blatant naivety. There's a lot more at stake than "access to oil". FYI Iraq showed oil reserves far superior to that of Saudi Arabia…

That's one of the more rational explanations of the causes of the Iraq war that I've heard....

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

#88

Post by octix »

gambiting wrote: post #73
brazzy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a LEGAL obligation to the shareholders to always take decisions that maximise profit over everything else [..] This is not "evil" - this is just how these companies work. Yes, it is very much evil. > The only way to combat this is to have a national health care system,that sets their own prices for drugs it buys from companies. No. All it takes is a different patent system that reduces the ( artificial, granted by…

If you opened your own company you would have to play by the same rules. Even if you wanted to sell your product cheaper, you would not be able to due to obligations to your shareholders,which have a legal binding. Is the system evil? Yes. Are you evil for following the rules? No. And as for the patents - how would you deal with a problem that after spending millions on research somebody could copy you and sell the s…

Yes, american dream, create a wonder drug and make billions...

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

#89

Post by venomsnake »

twoodfin wrote: post #82
venomsnake wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Ben Goldcare (Bad Science, Bad Pharma) the companies spend around 12% of their budgets on R&D and 30% on marketing ... so the R&D is the easy part to be funded - just outlaw the direct marketing to consumers and doctors and the companies can spend 3 times as much on R&D with no problems.

No problems? Why wouldn't your genius idea work in every sector of the economy? Surely Apple and Samsung could sell more, better phones if they didn't conduct market research or run ads...

Healthcare is unlike the rest of the economy. Drugs don't need marketing and market research. Because in healthcare you don't give what patients want but what they need.

If a drug is best in its class doctors will not need "seminars", "education" to use it - it will be self evident by the trials and outcomes. Oh but wait - you cannot compare drugs to other drugs. You only compare them to placebo thanks to the cuffs put on the various government agencies by the intense lobbying of the industry.

Edit: To get the drugs past the FDA you only need to show it behaves better than placebo. Comparative trials of drugs are a minority and rarely done.

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