141–150 of 422 posts
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…
Prepare for insulin shortages IL. Government intervention / price fixing has NEVER worked.
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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.
> 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.
Given that experience, I'd not be surprised if pharma spend a ton of money on direct-to-doctor marketing.
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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.
On the other hand, I hate the general attitude of "don't question your doctor or do your own medical research; the doctor knows what's best" Doctors are mortals too and can only have so much time to draw on info they crammed X years ago. Patients can quickly become more expert than GPs with regards to their own diseases, especially if they have months to research it. Anecdotal example - my sister had a wierd skin con…
Waking into a 15 minute appointment with months worth of research seems like a bad way to approach collaboration with healthcare professionals. Or do people still have personal relationships with doctors outside the appointment window?
It seems like GPs have become dispensers of medicine rather than care.
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Comments like this always make me sad. Not just because I disagree with them (I do!) or that I think they are claiming certainty about facts in dispute (I think they are ! [1, 2] ) but because they make no mention of trade-offs. We can vehemently disagree about these things, get our information from different sources, and advocate for different policies, but hopefully we can all agree that there _would_ be tradeoffs?…
whenever anyone casts doubt on the idea that healthcare (or pharma) could be cheaper (and implicitly that the tradeoffs would be worth it) my simple response is: then please tell me how does every other western nation accomplish it? overall healthcare goals are met and for less money (in aggregate and individually) all around the world. in which way is america exceptional except insofar as exactly that here business…
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How much is spent on marketing in comparison? Only in the US and New Zealand can you market drugs directly to the public. I sense an opportunity to destroy an unnecessary cost.
If you believe the market is choosing to waste money on ineffective marketing, sure. Do you have any particular reason to think that? Why would you expect return on capital to go up without marketing?
If you pass a law banning drug marketing, you may be able to get the same health outcomes with less overhead. Of course, this ignores all the hypothetical cases where marketing helps, like increasing awareness of a beneficial treatment that was not previously well known.
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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.
On the other hand, I hate the general attitude of "don't question your doctor or do your own medical research; the doctor knows what's best" Doctors are mortals too and can only have so much time to draw on info they crammed X years ago. Patients can quickly become more expert than GPs with regards to their own diseases, especially if they have months to research it. Anecdotal example - my sister had a wierd skin con…
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> 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.
That's why we (the Dutch) have pharmacies that take the prescription of the doctor and then determine, based on your current medicine and medical history, alter your new prescription to fit your need (and he will confer with the GP if needed)
A Doctor writes a script, and then a pharmacist (not on their own, but at the direction of an insurance company) suggests a change typically to benefit the insurer (for example changing a name brand to a generic or changing 30 days to 90 days so the patient doesn't get seen by the doctor again for 90 days for additional testing/monitoring). In the US the pharmacy/pharmacist can not change the script so they send the recommendation to the doctor for approval (and get paid a bonus from the insurer for sending the request), if the doctor approves the pharmacy gets a 2nd bonus, if the doctor does not make the change, there is a very good chance the insurer will drop the doctor from their network for not doing what the insurer asks to lower their costs through the pharmacy proxy.
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> government negotiated prices That's what we don't have in the US. You can certain make the case that we should, but that's a separate argument. Now we have a situation where we have a flat out price control, and it's going to have unintended consequences written all over it. All these arguments for "look at Europe" doesn't fly in health economics. There are not subtle differences in the US legally, infrastructurall…
Along similar lines, I read a study nearly twenty years ago and I wish I could find it for these very recurring government vs market debates. The study evaluated prices between single payer countries and found that it wasn’t the collective bargaining that reduced prices in those countries. They observed that there was no correlation between the size of the single payer and pricing. Rather, it was that the pharma adju…
I'd totally believe it. It occurs across all markets, with all actors. Market prices isn't simply supply and demand. It's many things like black markets.
Another example is public bonds in the US. Why are their yields under what it should be from the interest rates? It's because the earnings are tax free. The market has already adjusted for that.