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2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

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Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#51

Post by eropple »

bravo wrote: post #42
eropple wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people die needlessly because they can't pay. Are we not better than that?

You could apply that to so many things. It's just an appeal to emotion. People also needlessly lack education because they can't pay, but we'd be fucked if the government jumped to guarantee more loans and grants.

If you were begging the question any harder, you'd be one of the people tech guys hate on in the Tenderloin. And at the same time you're teetering on the edge of an epiphany that strikes at the heart of techno-fetishistic free-market worship. Because the government guaranteeing loans and grants isn't a good way to provide education, no--but plenty of countries make education a state function and charge a very manageable amount, if anything at all, to students, while making the total cost of operation remarkably reasonable.

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#52

Post by wyager »

Frondo wrote: post #39
themartorana wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exists a moral line, somewhere. In this case, parents of children with a rare, dangerous condition and the doctors that treat them find themselves on one side. If the price increase had been negotiated, or given fair warning, or was tied to any documentation of the cost of production, it would be much more tolerable - or at least understandable. Instead, this follows a recent trend of exploiting sick people for…

Yeah, you know what it seems like to me? That old saying that you can't put a price on human life, that's what these pharma companies are testing now. "Will they pay, even if we raise the price by 20x?" That's not the kind of behavior I'd like to look back on for my own life, when I'm at the end of my days.

> That old saying that you can't put a price on human life

It's a nice platitude, but it's obviously untrue. The unstated implication is that a human life actually has infinite value, which is even more obviously untrue.

It's easy to find an upper bound on the value of a human life; would you be willing to pay ten trillion dollars of public money (which would otherwise be hypothetically used to finance schools, research, etc.) to save the life of a single child?

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#53

Post by DougWebb »

digikata wrote: post #26
cma wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to repost a comment I made elsewhere that may shed some light: Maybe we need a charity that builds a research war chest to threaten companies like this with redevelopment. It costs a lot to replicate a pill and go through the FDA hoops, and once a private company does, the price just gets competed down to the point where it doesn't cover sunk the redevelopment costs--so in some scenarios no one bothers. Ins…

I wonder if insurance companies would have some motivation to at least partially fund such a charity?

Not likely; insurance companies have no incentive or motivation to reduce the cost of healthcare. The more money that moves through the healthcare system, the more money that passes through the insurance company. That gives them power, giant transient account balances, and "too big to fail" status.

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#54

Post by imgabe »

mgkimsal wrote: post #33
imgabe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be requirements to purchase the drug from manufacturers that comply with government regulated quality controls. Not that someone who really needs the drug couldn't seek out an online source to get it cheaply from overseas, but doctors may not be able to legally prescribe it from those places. I don't have any knowledge on the subject though, just speculating. At least in the US buying directly from overseas…

"doctors may not be able to legally prescribe it from those places." We just get a prescription and have it filled wherever's cheapest. It's not up to the doctor to say where it can be filled...

It may be illegal for pharmacies operating in Canada to buy from those manufacturers then, I don't know. I'm just saying there are possible additional risks with buying drugs of unknown provenance. It's not necessarily as simple as "just buy it from China or India".

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#56

Post by pavel_lishin »

mumumuyou2 wrote: post #38
beagle3 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets are good a at lot of things, but staying free is not one of them. (Similarly for a democracy, by the way). A "naturally" regulated market eventually converges into one all-powerful monopoly player - it's a stable configuration that maximizes the profit for the owners of that monopoly. So you have to regulate this "freedom" away from disappearing - in the same way that GPL regulates BSD freedom away from…

Coca Cola has been around for 129 years. How many centuries does this process take?

Keep in mind that the United States has some pretty strong anti-monopoly laws in place. Hence, not a free market, hence, we're not all drinking Coca Cola to the exclusion of most other things.

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#57

Post by scoot »

"2,000% price hike" is a link-bait headline.

Not to excuse the hike, but lets call it what it is - a 20 times increase.

Any use of percentages over double-digits is asking for confusion. And using a four-digit percentage is intentionally misrepresenting the scale of the increase.

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#58

Post by nickff »

mumumuyou2 wrote: post #40
beagle3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it back; You are right that it is not pure capitalism - in pure capitalism, there would not be FDA regulation which definitely plays a huge part here. But I think the end result is indistinguishable. I'll grant you that it is not YET the result of pure capitalism, assuming that there is, indeed, foreign production. But what stops the buyer from consolidating foreign producers as well? It's good for every produ…

Only one thing is for sure. No matter where, no matter when, no matter why: Capitalism is to blame.

>"Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment." -Joseph Schumpeter

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#59

Post by nickff »

vonmoltke wrote: post #44
mumumuyou2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the government granting limited rights in 2015 to a naturally occurring chemical discovered in 1933 is "capitalism".

> Yes, the government granting monopoly rights in 2015 to a naturally occurring chemical discovered in 1933 is "capitalism". Nobody has been granted monopoly rights on anything. The GP's article (from 2012) is referring to a situation where there is only one FDA-approved supplier of a product (naturally-derived ACTH). Nothing except lack of motivation is stopping someone else from entering the market. The OP is discu…

>"Nothing except lack of motivation is stopping someone else from entering the market."

Have you ever looked at the cost of getting a new manufacturer of a drug approved by the FDA? FDA approval requires a lot more than motivation; if you disagree, I invite you to start manufacturing the drugs yourself (or even contracting it out).

Re: 2,000% price hike for infant seizure drug called 'absurd'

#60

Post by FireBeyond »

vonmoltke wrote: post #44
mumumuyou2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the government granting limited rights in 2015 to a naturally occurring chemical discovered in 1933 is "capitalism".

> Yes, the government granting monopoly rights in 2015 to a naturally occurring chemical discovered in 1933 is "capitalism". Nobody has been granted monopoly rights on anything. The GP's article (from 2012) is referring to a situation where there is only one FDA-approved supplier of a product (naturally-derived ACTH). Nothing except lack of motivation is stopping someone else from entering the market. The OP is discu…

"Nothing except lack of motivation is stopping someone else from entering the market."

Where motivation, in this case, is also synonymous with 'sufficient bankroll to pass FDA approval', an investment that needs to be repaid, somehow...

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