161–170 of 422 posts
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They do that pretty much no matter what planet you live on :)
Nope, it's only legal in US and New Zealand.
Direct-to-doctor marketing is legal almost everywhere else, and it's by far what pharmaceutical companies spend more money on.
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I don’t demand my roads, libraries, or other public goods turn a profit. I wouldn’t demand the same of public pharma research (NIH, DARPA). Perhaps the market is not designed for this sort of endeavor (drug research). Let government stand in where the market has failed.
Except the market has succeeded fantastically. In my lifetime alone, AIDS and HepC went from death sentences to chronic conditions. Many forms of leukemia went from fatal to highly treatable. Meanwhile, what has the government done? The trip from DC to New York on Amtrak is slower today than it was in 1960. In 1980, DC’s Metro had self driving trains. They had to shut that down in 2009 due to lack of maintenance and…
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How will people lose their insulin over this?
Because, like some other drugs in the US, the drug manufactures will collude to create an artificial shortage?
Why shouldn't governments own private industry if it still competes through the market?
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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…
If you are rich, get cancer and can pick any country to get treatment in, which country do you go to? Obviously it would depend on the specific cancer, but I think the US would be the best bet in aggregate.
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…
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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…
>Instead of “scrapping” the industry, wouldn’t it make more sense to, as a first step, get rid of regulatory roadblocks that prevent competitors from producing out of patent drugs? What's your solution for drugs that aren't out of patent?
Wait for them to get out of patent? The average remaining patent term for newly approved drugs is 10-12 years. So drugs approved in 2008 will mostly be coming out of patent this year.
All this stuff you here about “evergreening” is entirely the result of gaming the FDA approval practices. Patent law is categorical: once you make a thing publicly available, that thing is prior art not just for the patent you file to cover it, but every invention embodied in the thing. So once the first set of patents expires on the thing, that thing itself is in the public domain. You can’t bring that specific thing out of the public domain by making incremental improvements, etc.
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> research funding is dwarfed by marketing for example i really believe pharma advertising should be banned
When television cigarette advertising was banned (in the US) profits and stock prices went up! [1] Since all the cigarette companies were in an even playing field, they saved a lot of money by not having to advertise. I think it may be a win-win if the U.S. prohibited television medical advertising. [1] https://economicdynamics.org/meetpapers/2011/paper_868.pdf
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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…
But medical advertising doesn’t inform the patient. Often it misleads. It has no value. Having medical information in public would be good so people can learn themselves but advertising provides no value.
Other highlights of the surveys include:
Most physicians agreed that because their patient saw a DTC ad, he or she asked thoughtful questions during the visit. About the same percentage of physicians thought the ad made their patients more aware of possible treatments.
Many physicians thought that DTC ads made their patients more involved in their health care.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/impact-...
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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?
You only need one participant in the market to start advertising and seeing profits, and then everyone else has to follow suit. Collectively the money may still be wasted because no one's relative market position changes very much.