61–70 of 422 posts
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How much is spent on marketing in comparison? Only in the US and New Zealand can you market drugs directly to the public. I sense an opportunity to destroy an unnecessary cost.
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?
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How will people lose their insulin over this?
If the law simply prevents prices higher than $100 in Illinois then manufacturers and distributors might stop selling in the state or only take orders from the state if they have surplus. Either of which might hit availability in the state, especially if the industry tries to make an example out of this. I guess it also depends on the profit margin at that price and how it compares with the "market price". Edit: Care…
I would love to see those marketing execs strung out in the court of public opinion for denying life saving medication because "omg our margins!"
That might just be enough to start lighting the fires that need to burn.
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This suggests that something is very wrong with the market. The costs of development and production (even ignoring failures) are way below revenue, which means that return on capital should be very positive. Somehow most of the money is going into overhead. One might debate whether the overhead constitutes corruption, but it should be able to be reduced.
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.
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You misunderstand. I'm not saying "If the manufacturers decide it costs $110". I mean, if it costs $110. You can't force someone to create things at $110 and sell them at $100... or at least, you can't for very long. Others are observing that the current prices are not currently anywhere near $100. That's completely unrelated to what I'm explaining. I'd also point out that is a temporary fact, not a permanent fact. I…
> That's completely unrelated to what I'm explaining. Then this is a https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_my_aunt_had_balls,_she%27d... scenario. If IL were capping below cost, that'd be a problem. They're not, though.
Why cap when they ought to have the power to look at the root problems? Why fix this one particular thing in a dangerous and probably-ultimately-ineffective way when they ought to be able to address the whole issue of price-gouging medicines more systematically?
(Other than the possibility of this being a band-aid while they do that, but I wouldn't trust a politician's word on that even if they were promising it.)
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…
You're looking at the wrong data. You need to look at return on capital. Right now the return on capital in pharma is below the cost of capital and it's trending towards zero. The inevitable result is significantly lower funding for research. https://endpts.com/pharmas-broken-business-model-an-industry...
Has there ever been a price control experiment that hasn't resulted in even worse problems?
[EDIT] to the downvoters: no, seriously, please post an example of, say, an OECD member state other than the US that doesn't use either explicit or implicit (single primary buyer setting prices, that is, monopsony) price controls as a major part of their healthcare policy. I assume you know of at least one, and I'd really like to know if I'm wrong about this.
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When it costs billions to develop a new drug due to onerous testing regulations, that's what happens. Ultimately returns in every industry tend towards zero. If we made it cheaper to develop new drugs it would extend the lifespan of the industry somewhat but not indefinitely. At some point diminishing returns take over and investment must go down.
> When it costs billions to develop a new drug due to onerous testing regulations, that's what happens. This does not explain the increase in cost of insulin, which was invented in 1923.
It's newer formulations that are expensive, and those are still protected by patents.
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If you can only charge $100, but it costs $110, what happens isn't that it gets sold at $100 anyhow. What happens is that it doesn't get sold. Nobody has an obligation to manufacture insulin. I'm not saying the costs are $110. I don't know. I'm just explaining why this can result in lost insulin.
It doesn't cost anywhere near $100 to produce a month's supply. https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expe... > The US is a global outlier on money spent on the drug, representing only 15 percent of the global insulin market and generating almost half of the pharmaceutical industry’s insulin revenue. According to a recent study in JAMA Internal Medicine, in the 1990s Medicaid paid between $2.36 and…
The current top-shelf insulins were not discovered in the 1920s and are considerably better than the ones that were. The older insulins (going back to R, L, N sold in the 80s) are fairly inexpensive; on the order of $25 per bottle (and I believe can be bought over the counter). The newer insulins sell for on the order of $275 per bottle.
The numbers I see say it should cost about $300 for a years supply for me (given my current usage) if everything was optimal (non-greedy, short supply chain). Then assume it goes through 3 hands to get to me (original manufacturer, distributor, plan manager; I'm ignoring the pharmacy since I assume they're at least partially altruistic) and add 50% each time for a total of 1012.50 (300 * 1.5. * 1.5 * 1.5). So even then, it's still less than 100 per month expected cost. Though that's for only the short acting insulin, not the 24hour.
What it would really cost without insurance right now is thousands per month. They're making bank on it.
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Why would they?
Because the manufacturers can decide to stop selling insulin in Illinois completely.
I would love to see them attempt to justify denying life saving medication in only one part of the country because money.
Might just be the straw that would finally break their backs, and it's been too long coming.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it costs billions to develop a new drug due to onerous testing regulations, that's what happens. Ultimately returns in every industry tend towards zero. If we made it cheaper to develop new drugs it would extend the lifespan of the industry somewhat but not indefinitely. At some point diminishing returns take over and investment must go down.
> When it costs billions to develop a new drug due to onerous testing regulations, that's what happens. This does not explain the increase in cost of insulin, which was invented in 1923.