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Patent Expires On Best Selling Drug of All Time
Hugh Pickens writes "The U.S. patent has just expired on Lipitor, the best-selling drug of all time, as the first generic versions go on sale, marking the end of a brand that has dominated the drug industry, lowered the cholesterol of tens of millions of patients, and generated $10.7 billion last year in annual sales. But drug manufacturer Pfizer, dependent on Lipitor for almost one-fifth of the company's revenue, does not intend to go down without a fight. Pfizer is employing unprecedented tactics to hold onto as many Lipitor prescriptions as it can with an aggressive marketing plan and forging deals with insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and patients to meet or beat the price of its generic replacements because even at the lower price, Pfizer has a huge profit margin because of the relatively low cost of materials for Lipitor. Some deals require pharmacies to reject prescriptions for low-cost generics and substitute a discounted name-brand Lipitor while other deals block generic makers from mail-order services that account for an estimated 40 percent of all Lipitor prescriptions. 'Pfizer's tactic of dressing up as a generics company is pulling the rug under the incentive system created to foster the development of generic drugs,' says attorney David A. Balto."
So, if congress has been able to withstand the lobbying for indefinite patents, given the massive amount of money on the line as indicated by this single drug patent, how come they fold to the likes of Disney when it comes to copyright? Maybe it's the cuteness of the cartoon characters.
Better known as 318230.
More often than not, they are "invented" based on research done at universities; including publicly funded ones. We should be cutting the middle-man and funding those projects more, rather than creating artificial property to encourage corporations to "invent" drugs.
Great Intellect...
I'm unclear here. Since when did pharmacists suddenly get the right to override a doctor's prescription? How can Pfizer actually get a pharmacist to sign an exclusivity agreement.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't care what it costs, people will do the research anyway because they know someone or themselves are afflicted with the condition. I just don't buy that we'll stop innovating if patents and copyrights disappear. There will still be profit to be made and there will still be incentive to make that profit. The only difference is that competition will drive down prices and drive up quality. How can you have capitalism AND government granted monopolies at the same time? It doesn't make sense.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
There's a vaccine to prevent a virus that causes cervical cancer. Unless you are living in a cave you would have heard of it. The development and even the US FDA trials were paid for by the Australian taxpayer, yet in the USA it sells for far more than anywhere else becuase that is what the market will bear. The US drug company that licenced it is not paying any more per dose than anyone else either, that extra money is pure profit. That's just one very blatant example of many.
I suggest you pay more attention before writing "bears only the most tenuous connection to the truth" then following that with something that is incorrect.
Necessity is the mother of invention, not avarice.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Exactly. A good rule of thumb: if your "right" requires others to do something for you, it's not a right - it's a service.
Or maybe the big companies are interested in avoiding the bad publicity involved with developing a new field, so they fund the small companies that take the heat, and then take over after the dirty work is done.
They may also outcompete on patient satisfaction.
Generics don't necessarily equate (nor do branded versions), and both for that reason and physician inertia, the prescription market tends to be slow to shift. Here's an example:
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=3106
As to why they don't equate -- even when the active ingredient is identical, the various binders and excipients can greatly differ, and that can mean that some patients only do well on a specific brand. This can be particularly critical with drugs that are prescribed in very low doses (micrograms) or that tend to degrade very rapidly.
I was just reading a study on that the other day (can't find it again offhand but it was in NEJM) -- for one commonly-prescribed drug, results were radically different depending on the binder -- from 18% to 90%. This can result in nominally-identical drugs not being bioequivalent (and the FDA has a rating system for bioequivalence).
[BTW as it turned out, the cheap old-fashioned sugar-based binders performed best.]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This is utter nonsense. Anyone with a decent understanding of scientific method and the ability to read research papers is fully qualified to make judgements about the drugs they should take. It boggles my mind that people will go in to their mechanic and question whether a proposed treatment is the right one but will give over care of the only body they ever get to someone else.
I do have conversations with doctors over treatments. I ask why they recommend a particular treatment, what alternatives exist, etc, and I research them. Interestingly, sometimes doctors don't know why one treatment is better, it's just what they like to do. Rarely, some have given me answers that amount to folk medicine. "My mom always..." The ones who really impress me say things like "Yes, drug X is getting a lot of press, but clinical trials show it's not more effective than the one I recommend, which also has fewer side effects/costs less/whatever". Those are the doctors I want.
You are actually a great case in point. I trust if/when you go to a doctor who prescribes Nexium for you, you will demand generic Prilosec because you know it's a better choice for you.