I see a good opportunity here build a 40-50 patient facility in touristy place like Thailand. It would cost about $250-350k then charge patients $4500 for a 3 month stay including medicine, food and board. Because of cheap labour and food your expenses won't be more than $20k per month. You would me making a profit with 40% occupancy with 85-95% you could recover your investment in under a year.
How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
331–340 of 355 posts
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Of course, the government can just take the pills from them, but if they did that, then no more cures would be developed. There seems to be a common misunderstanding of how eminent domain works. The Constitution requires "just compensation", which the courts interpret as fair market value.
The investors and the courts may have very different notions of the fair market value. If it's much less than the investors expect, expect no more cures. Consider that the whole point of the government taking it is the idea that the fair market price is too high. Also, there are many, many ways the government can take things without just compensation. For example, civil asset forfeiture. They could get the patent dec…
The point of the government taking it is that when there's only one seller people get greedy. That's why both sides have recourse of the courts.
Considering the lives at stake, intentionally paying 20% more than the estimated value would be a better deal than the current system.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
The drug from the original company is expensive everywhere, what India has is generics, which in their turn might lower the price of the original drug because of the competition. It also lowers the incentive of selling the original drug there at all (and consequently allowing the government to press for agreements). I have some unpopular opinions regarding the subject...
Actually, India basically refuses to recognise patents for a wide variety of pharmaceutical products. For a long time they refused to recognise patents for drugs that combat AIDS and a thriving market for generics sprung up. There was a lot of posturing and complaining by pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and the U.S. Government tried to heavy the Indian Government, but to no avail. When it became apparent that th…
The future lies in "biologics", which unlike small-molecule compounds, cannot be (that) easily copied/manufactured. Initial and continuous capital costs prevent easy "piracy" and that is where the majority of large-pharam/biotech R&D is headed.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#334I'm conflicted about this article. On the one hand, the pharmaceutical companies gouging ordinary Americans is abominable. Doing something to circumvent their greed is something to support. On the other hand, if enough people exploit loopholes like this, and the pharma company actually felt a significant drain in revenue, they may decide not to license the manufacture of these drugs in India at lower prices. If $84,0…
What exactly is "gouging?" The average wedding in the U.S. is almost $30,000. Average new car price is $33,000. Is $84,000 one-time an unreasonable price for a complete cure to a chronic disease?
Two of these are things where you have cheaper alternatives, and also the option to not do them at all. The third is something where you must buy this specific thing, or you die. That third thing costs substantially more than most U.S. households make in a year.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
But pharma companies aren't competing in a free market... I can't by (prescription X) from a canadian drug store. So it's not globalized, except for the protectionist patent laws and treaties surrounding them. It's time to reign in patent protections, specifically regarding extension patents, and bring in compulsory license maximums for prescription medicines. Give drug companies 5 years exclusivity once they react m…
Price controls work so well in general, why not try them in pharmaceuticals?
I'd much rather eliminate patent protections, but they do serve limited value.. the licensing restrictions for medications after 5 years at market is mainly to limit patent protections, while still providing some profit. I didn't say the company couldn't make agreements for higher, or lower amounts via contract arrangement.
Patent protections, in this case, and many others actually exceed the value they provide to larger society, so I'm in favor of limiting them in this case as opposed to removing them entirely. I understand there are a great amount of expense, but that is usually recouped within 3-5 years, and often in medication less than that.
Earlier competition will lead to better pricing structures that are less restrictive over marginalized costs. In effect benefitting consumers.
The key point in the constitution behind copyright and patents are "limited" exclusivity... those limits don't always have to be larger... sometimes they need to be smaller, and some industries aren't the same as others.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
But stronger patent protection won't improve pricing... competition will. I think we should reduce extension patents to 5 years, and possibly even have compulsory licensing fees ($10 per day, per prescription for the first year, $8 for the second ... 6... 4... down to $2, then $1) for prescription drug patents starting at 5 years. And the penalty for an insufficient patent application for a third party to properly ap…
What about drugs that cost more than $10 per day to produce? Hell that's only $3650 per year. How many manufacturing plans can sustain themselves on that sort of revenue, particularly if they are creating a drug for a disease that only affects 1000 patients in the world? One of the reasons why generic drugs prices jumped so much in the last few years, if because manufacturers said "screw this" and just stopped making…
The $10/day was for the licensing to the patent holder, not a cap on the cost of the drug to the consumer. This is about reducing patent protections on drugs to 5 years after market, and compulsory license caps after that, in order to encourage competition, not a price cap over production costs in a free market.
Without competition, you get inflated pricing.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Let big pharma reap their R&D costs some other way How?! You think they should create a social network for doctors? A billion dollars in ad sales is somehow morally better than a billion dollars from saving lives? They're making their money by saving lives, and being criticized for it. You're effectively saying that they shouldn't do any R&D, like the Indian generic drug companies. Sorry for the exclamation points.…
I'm not in that industry, I'm sure my ideas aren't very good. * massive step up in grant funding to front-load R&D costs so they're paid by the time the drug is out, or * worldwide medical R&D fund, bounties for individual re-searchable issues, or * move private R&D to universities, have profits gained pay back R&D, send any extras to researchers, and shutter R&D aspect of private medicine At least I'm trying to thin…
I don't have a problem with your ideas. I think the vast majority of drug development costs are being borne by industry right now. So when you say "massive step up in grant funding," that might have to be something like a 100x funding increase. And the NIH budget has been flat (when adjusted for inflation) since 2002 [1], so there doesn't seem to be much political will for your suggestions. (And that's bad! Even if you could get your suggestions passed, long-term stagnant government funding for R&D would stall drug development.)
I think your ideas should be implemented first in another country, such as India or somewhere in Europe, so that we can see how well they work before throwing away the baby in the bathwater. Personally, I would prefer more gradual changes here in the US. For example, the cost of running drug trials has been increasing. Big pharma companies like this; going through the drug trial obstacle course is their specialty, and the huge barrier means that small drug companies that do the pre-trial drug research have to go through the big companies to get to market. Reducing these costs would lead to more competition.
[1] http://www.aaas.org/page/historical-trends-federal-rd#Agency
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the way pharmaceutical companies also free ride on public universities. Free ride? You think pharmaceutical companies just come along and pluck the best drugs for free? No, they out-license it from the university and pay royalties. How else would Northwestern University build a brand new chemistry building from their Lyrica royalties?
Well, it's evidently cheaper for them to get it from a public resource than actually, you know, developing it from their own labs. So nice for them to be able to pick and choose the successful research while not having to absorb all the other, less interesting research funded with public money.
I don't really get your complaint. The pipeline from basic research to sellable drug generally takes longer than the 20 year patent lifetime. So it's impossible for drug companies to get reimbursed for the entire drug development pipeline. Rather, at a crude level, the process is split in half: first do the basic research (funded by public money), then build on the basic research and demonstrate a viable drug (incentivized by patent-protected drug sales). The value-added by drug companies is substantial regardless of wether you think some other organization could do it better.
Complaining that drug companies are free-riding on public research is like complaining that the local 7-11 is free-riding on the public safety provided by police officers.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only fair if you believe that the seller has the moral right to maximize their earnings. I think that's questionable across the board, but certainly in the pharmaceutical industry. As in: the idea behind capitalism (the reason we put up with it) is not that price-gouging is some fundamental right we should worship, but because capitalism works . What's that mean? It efficiently allocates resources. How does it…
> Notably, patents of life-sustaining medicines utterly destroy that cornerstone of capitalism. People can and will pay almost anything to get that drug, so the seller can charge what it wants - that's not capitalism as it's supposed to work, that's a hostage scenario. I don't think it is appropriate to compare a drug company that created a life-saving drug to a hostage taker. And in this scenario it is particularly…
I think there's some middle ground that could be found here. For arguments sake, how about:
1. A drug company can charge whatever it wants for a drug until some predefined multiple of the cost of developing the drug is recovered.
2. After that point, the patent expires and its up to the free market to determine prices.
Set the multiple of R&D costs high enough that it allows for the low success rate of drug research, and you have a model that still encourages risk taking whilst preventing profiteering.
Re: How I Got the $84k Hepatitis C Drug for $1500 by Buying It from India
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the US government could start making the company look like jerks by offering $50 billion for the patent Pretend you were in charge of Medicare/Medicaid. The NPV of the lifetime care cost of the HepC symptoms of each HepC patient on your rolls is $X. You want to encourage someone to develop a cure for HepC, so you put out a price bid for what you will pay someone who shows up with a cure. What price do you offer?
I offer $Y, the lowest amount I think I can get them to accept.
In the hypothetical, you are offering a price before anyone has developed it. "You want to encourage someone to develop a cure."
What price do you offer for someone who shows up with a cure?