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Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

nytimes.com

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Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#291

Post by charonn0 »

mason240 wrote: post #99
JulianMorrison wrote: post #9

Drug creation needs to be nationalized, 100% tax funded all the way from researcher to trials to manufacture, and the drugs sold at cost thereafter. And the pharmaceuticals industry needs to just go away.

It's really shocking to such an anti-technological development comment on site about technological development. If the federal government had locked down all IT development in the 1980s as you proposing they do for pharmaceuticals, we wouldn't have this forum to comment on, much less the industry it is built around.

The comparison is specious. People die when drug development fails, is too expensive, or is done too slowly (or not at all.)

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#292

Post by jonlucc »

Brakenshire wrote: post #154
ams6110 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this will just make a bad problem worse. Overreaction in the extreme. There may be a need to look at enforcing some more openness to formulas and manufacturing process so that after patents expire it's less possible to maintain an exclusive on a generic. That is consistent with the intent of patent protection and encourages open markets and competition.

The Pharma industry does need to be relatively strictly regulated - for instance see the issues over withholding and bias in clinical research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllTrials But, nationalizing the industry is impossible. We don't spend anywhere near enough on medical research for it to be possible. The UK government for instance spends about £500m a year on all medical research, even if you redirected all t…

I, for one, would not at all like it to be subject to government shut downs, annual budget cuts to pay for wars, etc.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#293

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Kalium wrote: post #264
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>spending billions in capital developing drugs to save lives Loaded question. This assumes they are doing it to save lives instead of doing it to make money. And doing it to make money, given the patent system, is the less ethical option when others would do it to save lives but are now forbidden to do such.

> Loaded question. This assumes they are doing it to save lives instead of doing it to make money. Not really. It assumes that the drugs save lives. If you pay $X for drug that was developed to save your live or $X for an identical drug that was developed to do a job and turn a profit, it's the same $X and the same drug. Why people are doing things is generally less important than that they are. This is one of those…

>to save lives

It pretty much does assume it there.

And it does matter because of how one would react. If your end goal is saving lives, you wouldn't spend a lot working for a cure to baldness and you wouldn't buy rights to a drug and then jack up the price just because you could.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#294

Post by elevenfist »

francoisdevlin wrote: post #285
jmsdnns wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was done slowly, it could be an extremely effective strategy. Not too different from what Berkshire did with See's Candies. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/13/warren-buff...

Except... 1. No one dies if they don't get See's Candies 2. There are other chocolates out there

And you can make chocolates in your kitchen with ingredients from a grocery store.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#295

Post by Kalium »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #293
Kalium wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Loaded question. This assumes they are doing it to save lives instead of doing it to make money. Not really. It assumes that the drugs save lives. If you pay $X for drug that was developed to save your live or $X for an identical drug that was developed to do a job and turn a profit, it's the same $X and the same drug. Why people are doing things is generally less important than that they are. This is one of those…

>to save lives It pretty much does assume it there. And it does matter because of how one would react. If your end goal is saving lives, you wouldn't spend a lot working for a cure to baldness and you wouldn't buy rights to a drug and then jack up the price just because you could.

OK. Then what do you think is the correct course of action for someone whose goal is to save lives? As opposed to making money, adopting temporarily your implicit contention that the two are opposed.

Preferably a sustainable course of action that allows for future actions to take place. A one-shot is generally useless on any kind of real timescale.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#296

Post by robotresearcher »

Kalium wrote: post #278
robotresearcher wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is all true but we don't have to buy from shady producers. Canadian and European producers supply their own very safe and mature markets. Buy the stuff that the UK NHS buys and at the same prices - their scale gets them good deals (with notable exceptions). This can't be worse than the current deal.

This might surprise you, but conditions that encourage abuse also encourage people to find ways to avoid having their abuse detected. Yeah, it can be worse than the current deal. Just look at the problems China has with counterfeit food.

This whole thread is about a horrible abuse present in the current system. The potential for abuse in an alternate system does not disqualify it. There is no perfect system and bad actors are everywhere. However, I don't see terrible endemic problems in the UK, Canada or the Eurozone from importing drugs. I'm sure they exist sometimes. But in the entire rest of the G7 drug costs are less and their outcomes no worse than the US.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#297

Post by nightpool »

sokoloff wrote: post #284
nickff wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a possible strategy, but is rarely used, as it is very risky (, it is likely to cost a great deal of market share in the long term). I have looked into it, and found very few examples of a company which tried to lure a competitor into a market, then under-sell them. The opposite (under-sell competition to gain market share then hike prices) also appears to be quite unpopular in the real market, for the opposi…

caseysoftware's argument is not that they're trying to lure a competitor into the market, but rather the threat that, upon spending all the money to reverse-engineer the drug and enter the market, the incumbent could drop its price to $20/dose and the new entrant would be stranded with no way to recover their NRE costs in an economically relevant timeframe. Both companies might be profitable on a marginal cost basis…

There is no need to reverse-engineer the drug, as its under an expired patent—so all of the processes and techniques used are open and theoretically (if the patent office has done its job right) should be easy for a competitor to reproduce.

this is in fact one of the stated goals of the patent system: a limited monopoly in exchange for the advancement of public knowledge.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#298

Post by mrinterweb »

magoghm wrote: post #281

Report about price going from $13.50 to $750 overnight => Hillary Clinton Tweets plan to combat the high cost of prescription drugs => The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index falls 3.4 percent. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clintons-tweet-high-drug-price...

That is incredible that a presidential front-runner has that kind of market influence in one tweet. It is clear that Bernie Sanders also has similar intentions as the article mentioned him pursuing punishing these business practices in August. It is insane that Medicare Part D made it so the US federal government is not allowed to negotiate drug prices.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#299

Post by Kalium »

robotresearcher wrote: post #296
Kalium wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might surprise you, but conditions that encourage abuse also encourage people to find ways to avoid having their abuse detected. Yeah, it can be worse than the current deal. Just look at the problems China has with counterfeit food.

This whole thread is about a horrible abuse present in the current system. The potential for abuse in an alternate system does not disqualify it. There is no perfect system and bad actors are everywhere. However, I don't see terrible endemic problems in the UK, Canada or the Eurozone from importing drugs. I'm sure they exist sometimes. But in the entire rest of the G7 drug costs are less and their outcomes no worse t…

If the problem is abuse, that a proposed successor system may not be better is a major source of concern.

Re: Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight

#300

Post by tapia »

frogpelt wrote: post #279
ben_bai wrote: post #121

Well, in german there is one word describing how to calculate something like this: "Leidensdruckanalyse". It's a dark word, because it basically means: Why give people drugs for $13.50 if the disease is horrible enough that they will, in the long run, accept $750 to ease the pain or to not die. We have laws preventing something like this, but then the industry just has to invent a "new" drug (basically the old one wi…

You may view it as sad. But I think two things are happening: 1. The price of the drug was artificially deflated. 2. The somewhat-free market is deciding how to handle the correction. If the market for this drug was interfered with and the price was not allowed to go up, who's to say the manufacturer couldn't just discontinue the product? Would that help?

I have to tell you that free-market cannot be applied to every market. It doesn't work in education system and it certainly should not work in the health system. Of course nobody wants to die, and people would theoretically be willing to pay as much as possible to have a drug they need to survive. That doesn't mean that this drug has to have an extremely elevated price or not being produced at all if its non profitable. We are not talking about the new iphone here, but about drugs that people need to stay alive.
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