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You are being downvoted but the contrast in treatment in regard to big Pharma is something to behold. They go from punching bag to media darling in the span of a year.
How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#22> A vial of NovoLog, one type of insulin, costs15 anywhere from $14 to $300 in the United States but only $48 in Singapore, $14 in India, $6 in Austria, and $0 in Italy. I think a reasonable solution without having to dictate details is to require pharmaceutical companies give the US most favored nation status - that is they must provide the US the same price as the country where it is sold for the cheapest. Perhaps…
I'd bet even buying at the 2nd most expensive OECD nations price would make a huge dent and seems more than reasonable for all the tax breaks and other incentives pharmacal companies receive.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#23It was amazing to see skepticism and criticism of big pharma become forbid during COVID with many citizens happily shaming, ostracizing, and censoring others.
And then to see it suddenly be allowed again.
Extremely fascinating.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#24The only "innovation" of capitalism is intermediation, otherwise called "rent-seeking". One of the big lies Big Pharma tells you is that R&D is expensive but the actual R&D is done primarily by government funding and research at colleges. Big Pharma spends WAAY more on marketing. The only real R&D Big Pharma does is patent extension. Patents have a life so companies will make minor changes to the molecule or the deli…
>One of the big lies Big Pharma tells you is that R&D is expensive but the actual R&D is done primarily by government funding and research at colleges Not an expert, but my understanding is that the kind of basic science R&D done by the government and academia is the simplest and easiest type of research to do by far. As it was explained to me- anyone can invent new compounds, the really really really hard low-percen…
Oh good, then the government and academia can stop spending $70b a year in basic R&D research. Since it's "simple and easy" then pharma can pay for it. Big brain move here.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#25> A vial of NovoLog, one type of insulin, costs15 anywhere from $14 to $300 in the United States but only $48 in Singapore, $14 in India, $6 in Austria, and $0 in Italy. I think a reasonable solution without having to dictate details is to require pharmaceutical companies give the US most favored nation status - that is they must provide the US the same price as the country where it is sold for the cheapest. Perhaps…
I think that it only "costs" $0 in Italy because the actual cost is paid by some subsidy or insurance system.
Also, insulin is a prescription medicine, so even in the absence of such confounding factors its price is not entirely market-driven; we have a nebulous understanding what the equilibrium price would be on a free market.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#26Pharma strikes me as one of the industries that would benefit heavily from a few congressionally chartered nonprofits being booted up. Same employee comp (with cash substitutes for stock), same general structure, same incentives, but with a mandate to recycle profits back into new drug development rather than paying out to shareholders through buybacks, dividends, etc, all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to en…
A good start would be if the medical industry in the US were run like normal businesses with transparent and consistent pricing. Right now nobody can predict how much something cost because insurances, hospitals, drug companies and a lot of middlemen play all kinds of games. I think we should mandate that all prices are open so people know what's actually going on. Hospitals should also charge the same price for the…
Not only that, but insurance companies get to negotiate special rates, but as an individual you have zero opportunity to do so, zero leverage. That is, to your point, the price of the service is 100% flexible. The ambiguity and confusion benefits those who are best positioned to benefit from it, that's not the individual.
It's a system optimized to be self-serving. It's the Healthcare Industrial Complex, that doesn't actually care much about health. Profits over people.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#27Pharma strikes me as one of the industries that would benefit heavily from a few congressionally chartered nonprofits being booted up. Same employee comp (with cash substitutes for stock), same general structure, same incentives, but with a mandate to recycle profits back into new drug development rather than paying out to shareholders through buybacks, dividends, etc, all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to en…
Like a kind of Service, for Health, covering the whole Nation... a National Health Service, perhaps! Sorry, brit here, couldn't resist. It's really interesting seeing (in my unscientific view) America slowly realising it needs to reform profit-driven health, while England's government slowly privatises its existing "free at poinnt of use" service and makes it harder for poorer people to access good health care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option for those missing the connection.
NHS comes across to me as government funded healthcare rather than a gov-kickstarted not-for-profit insurance option. Am I missing a nuance? Not familiar with NHS so I could have a wildly wrong impression of what it is.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#28Pharma strikes me as one of the industries that would benefit heavily from a few congressionally chartered nonprofits being booted up. Same employee comp (with cash substitutes for stock), same general structure, same incentives, but with a mandate to recycle profits back into new drug development rather than paying out to shareholders through buybacks, dividends, etc, all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to en…
I.e. you want the government to run industry. That never works well.
> all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to ensure that comp and waste don't go into excess
Since when has that ever worked for government run operations?
> The hope would be that the industry doesn't actually profit off of human suffering
I.e. industry works to alleviate suffering by providing the things that suffering people want. Their motivation is to make a profit.
The profit tends to be far less than the waste from the inefficiency of government industry.
BTW, the drug industry would serve us a lot better if they weren't strangled by FDA regulations and a screwed up patent system.
See "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Sam Peltzman:
https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Pharmaceutical-Innovation-...
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#29Its kind of amazing how a basic medication like Wellbutrin XL is like $1.18/dose while in the US, you're looking at $83/dose ($2483/30 at Walgreens). Same damn pill, free market capitalism my ass.
Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)
#30The only "innovation" of capitalism is intermediation, otherwise called "rent-seeking". One of the big lies Big Pharma tells you is that R&D is expensive but the actual R&D is done primarily by government funding and research at colleges. Big Pharma spends WAAY more on marketing. The only real R&D Big Pharma does is patent extension. Patents have a life so companies will make minor changes to the molecule or the deli…
>One of the big lies Big Pharma tells you is that R&D is expensive but the actual R&D is done primarily by government funding and research at colleges Not an expert, but my understanding is that the kind of basic science R&D done by the government and academia is the simplest and easiest type of research to do by far. As it was explained to me- anyone can invent new compounds, the really really really hard low-percen…
Pretty close. Without getting into what is “cheaper and easier”, the work you need to do to publish is a bit different from the amount of work you need to do to: identify targets, set up screening assays, screen hundreds of thousands of compounds, find/optimize a hit, set up secondary assays, optimize the lead compound, do all kinds of physchem/tox/safety studies, select an indication, test in animal models if good ones exist, try and find a suitable dose range, and put all that into a package to support a phase 1 trial. This is part what I’ve seen on the biology side of things, and it only scratches the surface of what the chemistry (small-batch synthesis and the scale-up), pharmacology, and associated people contribute.
Lots of people can synthesize and test a compound in vitro. Doing the above is another challenge because it needs to work reliably in humans.
And yes, from my understanding, universities are getting better at patenting and licensing their IP. Some even do some basic drug discovery IIRC.