101–110 of 422 posts
> “Health care is a right for all, not a privilege and that is why I am so proud that we created an insulin price cap that successfully puts patients above profit,”
Healthcare isn't a right. If it was a natural right it wouldn't be necessary to force people to pay for it.
One day inflation will strike and insulin will no longer be available at that price. Will he be proud then?
Net effect of this is yet to be seen, since it doesn't go into effect until 2021, but one possibility is that insurance companies will only cover variants of insulin that are cheaper than the allowed maximum, or the value that they calculate allows maximum extraction of value. Or, alternatively, the price of insurance will rise to spread the cost among all covered people.
The fundamental problem is that insulin should be a commodity, but it is not. Baseline human insulin is actually available fairly cheaply; ~$25 for a month's supply. But pharmaceutical companies have developed and sell a variety of faster-acting and longer-release insulin analogs of increasing price; and although many of them have technically fallen out of patent protection, generic makers have been slow on the uptake and manufacturers have done various tricks (relabeling, etc.) to ensure that they can maintain their effective monopoly.
There's something deeper that is wrong here that is preventing the market from working as it should be working; that is, generic makers making fast-acting insulin cheaply and driving the price down to the marginal price of production.
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If you can only charge $100, but it costs $110, what happens isn't that it gets sold at $100 anyhow. What happens is that it doesn't get sold. Nobody has an obligation to manufacture insulin. I'm not saying the costs are $110. I don't know. I'm just explaining why this can result in lost insulin.
That's not really a relevant argument here as insulin costs <$5 to manufacture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it costs billions to develop a new drug due to onerous testing regulations, that's what happens. Ultimately returns in every industry tend towards zero. If we made it cheaper to develop new drugs it would extend the lifespan of the industry somewhat but not indefinitely. At some point diminishing returns take over and investment must go down.
Given that closer research is finding that a lot of popular drugs and treatments actually do more harm than good, I don't think it's so easy to characterize the current testing regulations as onerous. The current regime in the USA didn't happen for nothing. It's well-known now that pharma companies had long been exploiting the file drawer effect and p-hacking to inflate the apparent safety and efficacy of their drugs…
This provides what to me is compelling evidence that the efficacy requirement by the FDA is wasteful.
I'm really past the whole "pharma need to charge high prices to fund research" line of argument. Aside from being factually untrue (research funding is dwarfed by marketing for example[0]), it is also arguing for a continued unhealthy relationship with pharmaceutical care. A large amount of research is currently publicly funded. Either via public academic research or directly. When that research bears fruit it is oft…
I see no reason that pharma manufacturing can’t be done just regular contract manufacturing. The Zika vaccine is a prime example. The US developed the ZIPV vaccine at public expense, and then, for some mind boggling reason, they offered an exclusive license to Sanofi. Imagine if Apple outsourced iPhone manufacturing by giving Foxconn and exclusive license! The US could have solicited bids to manufacture the vaccine and accepted more than one, thus resulting in multiple sources without any IP exclusivity.
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It is where I live, so weird visiting the US and seeing "ask your doctor for" adverts. If I asked my GP for a specific medication they'd look at me like an alien.
> If I asked my GP for a specific medication they'd look at me like an alien. He shouldn't. They're not all knowing super genius specialists who keep up with all the drugs and research.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it costs billions to develop a new drug due to onerous testing regulations, that's what happens. Ultimately returns in every industry tend towards zero. If we made it cheaper to develop new drugs it would extend the lifespan of the industry somewhat but not indefinitely. At some point diminishing returns take over and investment must go down.
The testing regulations are not onerous. They are necessary to ensure that new medications are both safe and effective. I often see vague complaints about the regulations, but no one seems to have specific suggestions about how to lower drug development costs while still protecting patients.
Specific suggestion: get rid of efficacy requirement, keep safety requirement. Let doctors decide what works, as they currently do for off-label uses just fine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is where I live, so weird visiting the US and seeing "ask your doctor for" adverts. If I asked my GP for a specific medication they'd look at me like an alien.
> It is where I live, so weird visiting the US and seeing "ask your doctor for" adverts. Those ads are a small portion of pharma marketing budgets for prescription products. The vast majority goes to direct-to-doctor marketing.
SB0667 - Illinois 101st General Assembly
PRICING-PRESCRIPTION INSULIN
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=0667&G...
I'm really past the whole "pharma need to charge high prices to fund research" line of argument. Aside from being factually untrue (research funding is dwarfed by marketing for example[0]), it is also arguing for a continued unhealthy relationship with pharmaceutical care. A large amount of research is currently publicly funded. Either via public academic research or directly. When that research bears fruit it is oft…
Ironically, insulin is a great example of why your premise is false: Insulin replacement was developed a century ago, being first discovered by a government entity (U of Toronto). Private companies commercialized the treatments in the 1940s and 1950s, developing long acting forms that could be administered in a single injection per day. Since then, pharmaceutical companies have made continuous improvements with fewer…