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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."
My ass. you grant a monopoly to someone. That someone gets big on that monopoly. You think that they would just let it go when patent expires ? think again. has music industry let it go with copyrights ? no, they are trying to extend it to 120 years now. pfizer is just another example. bad example though - they could just lobby beforehand and try to extend patent durations, like music industry does with copyrights.
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At least Pfizer isn't trying to unreasonably extend the patent, sue its customers, or use other underhanded tricks to cheat the system at the expense of everyone else.
Unlike some other...companies.
A patent is going to expire. The company responds with marketing and by lowering it's price.
That's just horrid~ Someone is working to hard to find ills.
What's that? there are going to create a generic version of the drug they created? OMG!!1!!!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey, they are just taking care of their stockholders Nothing wrong with it, right?
Capitalism, it just works, bitches.
Today Pfizer announced results of a new study showing that cholesterol has nothing to do with any health problems whatsoever, but water can kill you. Simultaneously they announced the start of trials of a new drug to control this menace, tentatively named hydroprofitor.
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.
Phizer was able to extend the drug by getting new patents on it. Then for these past few months they paid off the generic drug makers to not create generics for the drug. A scheme known as "pay for delay". Heard about it yesterday on Marketplace and was shocked to hear that a generic drug company has to go to court after the patent has expried to official unexpire it. "This is the government policy, set up in the 1980s, to bring us lower drug prices." http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/lipitor-makes-way-generics
The free market just kicked in. The drug companies are now playing meet or beat. Translation: competition works.
What's wrong with that?
The problem existed PRIOR to the patent expiring, where artificially high prices existed.
Go tinker with that set of rules if you dare, but don' blame the free market just because prices
come down the minute the market actually becomes free.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Pfizer is a for-profit company, and that they want to patent their product and profit from their ingenuity is great. That's how capitalism works: sell a good product that people want to buy, turn a profit, succeed.
However, drug patents last up to 20 years. Rather than riding heavily on Lipitor profits for that period of time, and releasing alternate versions of the same drug over and over again, wouldn't it have been prudent to turn efforts toward producing and patenting the Next Amazing Drug?
They knew the day would come that Lipitor's patent would expire. If, in spite of the massive profits they've made from this and other products, they couldn't innovate anything to replace that massive chunk of profits, then they have to bow out gracefully instead of going through ridiculous, unsavory means to ensure revenue.
Profiting morally from a good profit is capitalism. Tactics like this are not.
that the quoted David A. Balto is an anti-trust attorney, and from his statements likely working for a generic drug manufacturer(s). He argued for the ATT/T-Mobile merger, so one can tell he's not particular about which side he argues.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Don't buy your food in a box. Cook it yourself.
Pfizer did not discover or invent Lipitor. Lipitor was discovered and invented by Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in an industrial setting, not academic. Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis partnered with Pfizer to develop and market the drug and share the profits. From the profits of Lipitor alone, Pfizer was able to buy and takeover Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis, where it closed the Ann Arbor site a few years later in 2007 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02krhNFfEq4). Of the 2200 scientists at the Ann Arbor site, approximately 600 remained with the company, of which approximately 300 relocated to Groton, CT, Pfizer's legacy discovery research site. The other 300 scientists relocated to sites in St. Louis, MO (winding down and eventually closing), La Jolla, CA, and Sandwich, England (now in the process of closing - over 2000 jobs lost). In these relocations, Pfizer was very generous and bought families homes for the original price and paid to relocate employees and their families across the world. Pharmaceutical site closures are very expensive and impact families and disrupt local economies significantly; purchasing employees homes is an incentive to retain talent. Pfizer assisted employees buy new homes by paying for real estate agents and paying closing costs on homes. In 2009, Pfizer bought Wyeth Laboratories and laid-off tens-of-thousands of scientists, many of them from Ann Arbor, MI, its most successful discovery research site ever based on the site talent, technology, and number of marketed drugs from that site, Groton, CT, and many from Wyeth various sites in the U.S. Several years ago, Pfizer was able to reduce the cost of manufacture of Lipitor more than 200-fold using a series of natural wildtype and industrially modified enzymes.
Pfizer's former CEO Jeffrey B. Kindler and former CEO of McDonalds, became so unpopular with the rank-and-file that he earned two nick-names, first "McBurger," and finally and more commonly known as "CLOWN SHOES" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clgRId8x0ZM). Employees would and still post about dissatisfaction with the company's direction and leadership on BioFind.com (http://biofind.com/rumor).
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.
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No, part of me wonders the same thing. There has been research published recently that suggests that the link between serum cholesterol and cardiovascular disease may not be as direct as once thought. If the thing that we're measuring does not have a direct correlation to future disease, then the drug we're taking to lower the measurement might not have any real benefit. Statins like Lipitor have probably improved the health of a lot of people, but they may still be overprescribed.
I mean, TFA itself says Lipitor is "the best-selling drug of all time." Really? Would that many people really have died of heart attacks had they not been prescribed this drug?
People talk about how "modern diet, modern society is killing us" -- again, really? You should have seen how my grandfather ate. He'd trim the thick ribbons of fat from the ends of his pork chops so he could eat them last, then he'd eat the fat off everybody else's plate. He lived to a reasonable age, long before statins were ever invented. Sure, that's anecdotal, but where are the statistics? Was heart disease caused by high cholesterol really that much more common among my grandfather's generation? Or my father's? So much more common that it proves that almost everybody ought to be on Lipitor? My gut tells me no. Some studies from England (where my grandfather lived) suggest rates of heart disease did increase through the postwar years, but then started to decline in the 1970s -- again, before statins were even available. One does have to wonder.
Breakfast served all day!
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Surely Alcohol is the best selling drug of all time
Lipitor has had an ANDA filed for a generic version by Watson, yes. However, the law allows Pfizer to grant a 180 day exclusivity contract to a manufacturer of their choice (in this case Watson) for the ANDA. To those affected by this drug going generic: IT HAS NOT GONE TRULY GENERIC YET! Wait until the 180 day exclusivity contract expires (in 179 days) and the true "invisible hand" will take effect in the market.
In the meantime, you're most likely going to need to get the BRAND NAME Lipitor for it to be covered to the fullest extent by your pharmacy benefit manager ("insurance company")! These PBMs get rebates (NOT kickbacks) to lower the cost of the brand-name drug, so it's financially advantageous to the member to not cover the generic yet. Here's why:
Lipitor (brand) 90ct bottle = $550 retail, minus $330 in rebates = $220 total cost of drug.
atorvastatin by Watson (generic) 90ct bottle = $530 retail, minus $0 in rebates (Watson doesn't offer any) = $550 total cost of drug.
(These amounts are fictional, however they represent true real-world scenarios.)
Disclaimer: I work for one of the US' largest Pharmacy Benefit Managers in the Clinical Review department. We had a meeting today regarding all of our Medicare Part-D patients and how they're affected by this specific drug going generic. No suits were involved and the members are receiving the best possible drug savings until the exclusivity contract expires. Once it expires the new generics will be placed on the tier-1 ("generic") copay structure.