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Subject:
defense of drug company prices
Category: Health > Medicine Asked by: nkamom-ga List Price: $5.00 |
Posted:
22 Jul 2004 05:16 PDT
Expires: 21 Aug 2004 05:16 PDT Question ID: 377537 |
My well-meaning, but misdirected mother spends her days sending me junk e-mail. I usually just delete them, but recently got one that really stuck in my crawl (whatever that is). It went on and on about how evil the drug companies are for charging outlandish prices for their drugs, and how the generic drugs cost so much less. I am looking for a concise article on the reasons drug companies charge the prices they do, to send her in response. I am looking more for the costs that go into developing a new drug and the costs of doing business rather than a lesson in economics. |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: dr_bob-ga on 22 Jul 2004 09:06 PDT |
This is a very complicated topic, and I will tell you point blank, both sides have some very valid points. You would be well served by choosing to look at both sides of the issue. Its not only drug companies, it's legislation, lawyers and medical professionals who have made this into a big mess. I can however, be reasonably certain that, whatever you were sent was full of holes as is most information regarding drug pricing. I doubt that for $5.00, you'll get anything more than a biased cursory examination of the issue--but I guess that's what you're after anyway. |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: purkinje-ga on 22 Jul 2004 10:20 PDT |
GOOD QUESTION!! Seeing as I have worked in an organic chem lab trying to design new anticancer drugs, I may be a little biased on this subject, but I must say that I support the prices of drug companies. It takes several years after college of intense education to be able to have the skills to design new drugs. I won't graduate and start my career in academic medicine until I'm 35! (An MD/PhD takes 11-12 years.) Most people just have no clue how hard it is to design new drugs. As reported in Science magazine, 19 March 2004 issue, pg. 1797, "According to Tuft's CSDD, it now costs companies an average of $897 million, taking account of candidate compounds that fail along the way-- to develop, test, and obtain approval for a new medicine. And there are plenty of failures. A staggering 99.9% of compounds wash out of the development pipeline." Imagine that! You spend $897 million on each trial drug, and only .1% of them will ever bring you a profit. You'd have to charge the prices they do just to be able to design ANY drugs. Some people think that the government should control prices, but that would control the success or failure of pharmaceutical companies. Neither could government shorten the patent times of drugs, since that would destroy motivation for making new drugs (right now a patent will only last 17 years from the time the drug enters clinical trials, leaving about 12 years for it to actually make any money), and pharmaceutical companies are having a hard enough time as it is (there are only four companies for manufacturing vaccines, because they must have at least $5 billion stored away for potential lawsuits). Furthermore, the pharmaceutical patents do not apply in other countries, and so pharmaceutical companies already subsidize the world?s access to drugs. Therefore, if the United States decides to import cheaper drugs from Canada, this is like circumventing the patent laws and the FDA, and pharmaceutical companies will refuse to sell cheaper drugs to Canada anymore (at least two have already officially made that claim). This will make Canadians pay much higher prices for their prescriptions, and it will make prescriptions in the U.S. much more at risk for low quality medicines and even for potential errors in what the drug is or the proper dosages (this is because generics are formulated differently than the brand name drugs). If one thinks that designers of drugs and doctors make too much, he or she ought to consider that many movie stars, athletes, business men, and musicians can make many times more than that. Are good looks, physical ability, and managerial prowess to be prized above the knowledge of saving lives? What if we were to demand lower prices for these other types of services? Movies would become lower-budget, businesses would not survive, musicians would be forced to perform only as a side job, and athletes would not have as nice equipment or as much incentive to play hard. Likewise, lowering doctors? pay would drive away the most talented doctors who could succeed in a variety of other fields, resulting in lower-quality care for us. What other profession is expected to produce miraculous results while receiving little to no compensation? What other profession has to work so hard for so little respect? But when you are lying on the hospital bed, I do not think that you wish you had a doctor who worked for free, or some generic medicine made in a bathtub in India. You would want the best services available, but, of course, you don?t want to pay for it. You don?t want to pay for his hundreds of thousands of hours of studying. You do not want to pay for extra-ordinary talents in science, health, and technology, and for his extraordinary efforts to benefit society, yet you want to pay millions more to some guy who can throw a ball through a hoop, or to some guy who is stealthy at buying and selling goods. And do you think health care is free to the doctor?? He or she has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational costs, and hundreds of thousands more for facilities, tools, instruments, and hundreds of thousands more for liability insurance. Look at sports-- they do not have to pay for their stadiums. That is just ridiculous. Don?t get me wrong, I love sports. I have played intercollegiate rugby, which was an under-funded sport, and it would have been nice to have more support rather than paying for stuff out of my own pocket. But the expectations on doctors and scientists are just ridiculous. |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: dr_bob-ga on 22 Jul 2004 10:36 PDT |
purk, Would you say it's fair that drug companies can use public, academic funding to the tune of 250 million to discover, identify, and test an new natural product and then reap more than a billion a year in profits from said drug? Would you say it's fair that drug companies can and often do promote off-label use of medications to doctors who then use them at great risk to their patients? Is it even remotely fair, that as patients we have to pay for pharmaceutical company liability, when it is they who push the use of off-label drugs? Why does it cost less for me to buy a drug in Canada than it does in the US when the drug was manufactured in Germany? Is it right that doctors, prescribe the newest standard of care, when there are plenty of older drugs that would likely do the trick? You're still a little enamored with your chosen profession. It's easy to be a cheerleader. Yeah, the drug companies butter our bread, 99.999% of all new compounds don't become drugs, blah blah blah, but as I said before, disagree or not, this is a complicated issue. |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: pinkfreud-ga on 22 Jul 2004 10:42 PDT |
Here's an interesting article: http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/09/pf/health_drug_cost_quest/ |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: neilzero-ga on 22 Jul 2004 10:57 PDT |
If average drug prices fell, would the quality and number of new drugs fall slightly or considerably? I'm confident that there is some fat in the system that could be trimed by wise management, I can't say how much fat can be trimed before future generations are deprived significantly of improved drugs. In some sence the ready availability of genaric drugs, is driving prices higher on new non-genaric drugs. Neil |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: purkinje-ga on 22 Jul 2004 10:57 PDT |
I never said there weren?t two sides to the issue. And yes, I am enamored with my profession?you have to be to endure this long in school. As you say, there will always be bias in this issue, including with yourself?if you are going to take the facts and say, ?blah, blah, blah,? then you obviously are pretty biased yourself. At least I can recognize that there are other facts that are not fair. I was just answering the guy?s question for defense of pharma, not writing a formal paper on the entire topic. I agree with you?there are two sides. It?s true that there?s much public funding at the university level that gets us as far as we?ve gone, but those publicly funded people also make their own patents, even at the university level, and so they are making money too in the same way. Plus you cannot say, ?Hey, those advancements in science were just for our common knowledge, you can?t actually do something useful with what we?ve discovered and go make money off them!? But at the same time, the public, who is paying tax dollars for such advancements, should reap some benefit. But maybe the benefit is that an advancement is made at all. I dunno. I do not support how drug companies go around telling docs that ?our drug is the best,? yada, yada. Doctors need to be educated and look at the research themselves. It?s true that foreign drug companies (the example you gave, Germany) know they can charge more in the US than other countries. Again, if the newer standard of care is better, it should be recommended. But yes, if there is an older drug that does the trick, then the doc should explain that to the patient. It?s all about honesty and informed decisions. |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: dr_bob-ga on 22 Jul 2004 11:03 PDT |
So Pink, According to that article, it's perfectly reasonable to accept less money for your product, as long as you get all you can from a capitalist society like america? It's also perfectly legal to do that, when we all keep paying more and more into the insurance system too? Price controls just ain't doin it for me. The rest of the article is interesting, but justifying why we're paying more doesn't explain why. For instance, if we're selling more, why are we paying more? Aren't drugs like DVD players? Why do I have to pay more because the drug company has decided to piss away it's revenue on full page ads for viagra? What happened to cialis and levitra? Isn't there real competition???Why does nobody use mevocor? <wink wink--this is the most telling paragraph> In 1988, consumers footed nearly 60 percent of the nation's drug bill, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2001 only 31 percent came out of our pockets, mainly because the rise of managed care meant our insurance company was more likely to pick up the tab.<bigger-wink-wink--this is what you've got to think about> Managed care means what? Where do they think this money is comming from????? Like I said, this is a complicated issue. |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: dr_bob-ga on 22 Jul 2004 11:07 PDT |
Purk, Yeah, I meant to ruffle your feathers a bit. Sorry, I just wanted to provoke a little debate. <wink> |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: purkinje-ga on 22 Jul 2004 11:14 PDT |
No problem, it's cool (c: |
Subject:
Re: defense of drug company prices
From: pinkfreud-ga on 22 Jul 2004 12:21 PDT |
dr_bob, I said that the article was interesting. I did not say that I agree with everything in it. My theory is that the main reason why name-brand drugs are expensive is because so many of them are purple. Everyone knows that purple is the color of royalty. Darn those highfalutin' drugs. ;-) ~pinkfreud |
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