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The Cost of Drugs For Rare Diseases Is Threatening the US Health Care System (hbr.org)
An anonymous reader shares an article: There are 7,000 rare diseases affecting 25 million to 30 million Americans. The average drug approved under the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 (ODA), which governs rare disease approval, costs $118,820 per year. Assuming a similar cost, if a single drug were approved under the ODA for 10% of rare diseases, the total would exceed $350 billion annually -- more than 10 percent of the total amount that America spends on health care and much more than the health care costs attributable to either diabetes or Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. If this seems far-fetched, consider the two drugs for treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy that the FDA approved in the last six months: eteplirsen, which is sold by Sarepta Therapeutics and costs $300,000 annually per patient, and deflazacort, which is sold by Marathon Pharmaceuticals and costs $89,000 annually per patient. However, approval of such costly drugs exposes an uncomfortable truth: scientific discovery has outpaced health care economics. [...] In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) determines the cost effectiveness, or value, of newly approved drugs based on their impact on quality-adjusted life years. These determinations inform the National Health System's (NHS) treatment-coverage decisions. In contrast, the FDA is prohibited from considering cost or value in its decision making, and there is no U.S. governmental equivalent of NICE.
I wonder what's the markup on those drugs.
Are they that costly to produce?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Stop spending all your money on bombing brown people and spend some money on healthcare for a change.
Just how many Martin Shkrelis are there in the (supposedly) (legal) drug business?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The average drug approved under the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 (ODA), which governs rare disease approval, costs $118,820 per year. Assuming a similar cost, if a single drug were approved under the ODA for 10% of rare diseases, the total would exceed $350 billion annually
In this chain of healthcare, who is making the money?
To be more precise, who is making a killing?
It's a fact that some entity (cabal) is making big cash, but find it hard to come to terms that this cabal or cabals are profiteering over the misery of others in these United States.
The FDA doesn't regulate costs or whether or not medicare should cover a particular drug - only that a drug does what it says and is relatively safe.
This is exactly why socialized medicine (and it's ideologues) are BAD. They pick and choose which diseases get treated and who goes without because it's not "cost effective" (that is, it's not "valuable" to them).
"Well evil corporate insurers do the same thing you stupid AC poster". I can hear you say to which I respond.
You can still CHOOSE your level of insurance (you can't with a government entity and a government entity automatically increases costs of health insurance if you elect to take additional coverage as in the vaunted UK system)
That still doesn.t prevent the drug from being researched and SOLD to people who want it (unlike this article wants which would shut down R&D because any drug treating rare diseases will never be fully tested and researched because the government won't allow it to be sold.)
But, but socialized medicine stops people from going bankrupt - THEY'RE ALREADY BANKRUPT - the government in the UK GIVES people houses, clothing and shelter because the taxes to support those sociali systems are so high that it's impossible to break out of the system.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - Those who give up medical liberty for a little medical safety deserve NEITHER.
You were worried about Obamacare causing this problem! Looks like it's just a market "failure of the commons" - or, ironically in this case, "failure of the rarities!"
When someone will pay a price for a thing, that is the price of the thing. When that someone doesn't really care about the price, because they can just print more money, there is no downward pressure on the price.
It's math, kids.
We aren't gonna waste our time bombing whites.
We have a culture built around the concept that human life is worth any amount of money. At the end of our lives we spend and spend to pry out another 2 weeks of lifespan.
Instead maybe we should realize that with 7.5 billions of people, the value of any given human life is very close to zero. It sounds harsh, but it is also the truth. If people want to pay to save themselves, great have a go, but we should not be foisting that cost onto society when there is no rational reason. Spending those sums is absurd.
We don't even treat our pets in that way: we realize that life is finite, and we try to keep them comfortable at the end so they do not suffer, but we are willing to acknowledge that there is a time when it is best to let them go. Ease their passing so they can go in peace and as much comfort as possible. We need to adopt this attitude for people as well.
We're not a scattered band of 10K hunter-gatherers on the brink of extinction any longer. A random human life is simply not valuable.
What's threatening the US health care system is putting profit ahead of lives.
Good luck. You poor saps are going to need a lot of it.
Log in or piss off.
Our society is so corrupt that we do not regulate the costs or profits made by drug producers. There are drugs that are dirt cheap to produce that cost a king's ransom. I suppose that the right wing will consider that as a freedom issue which is nonsense. Do they mean free to die in agony?
The cost of Sovaldi and Daklinza (used together) to treat Hepatitis C (which infects 3.5-5 million Americans), is $336,000 for the 24-week course of treatment. $1000 for each pill. The cure rate of Sovaldi and Daklinza is approximately 90%. The same drugs in India cost about $4 per pill.
Hepatitis C currently kills more Americans than any other infectious disease.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/rele...
You are welcome on my lawn.
A little known secret: Most countries' governments arbitrarily set the price of drugs and medical devices during negotiations and force pharma and medical device manufactures to sell it at a loss (or simply not have access to that market). To make up for the R&D and marketing, they have to jack the price up in the US to make up the loss. http://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-...
With the upcoming collapse of Obamacare, the rest of the world should be afraid of the US doing the same to the drug and med device companies. The cost of healthcare for the rest of the world will go up while it goes down for the US. I shudder to think about the hoards of angry folks when NHS starts becoming moderately expensive.
Do you mean produce as in to manufacture. Or do you mean to research and development and manufacture? If it's a rare disease then it by definition doesn't achieve economies of scale.
Some rare diseases, if untreated, will lead to a person's death. That's bad of course.
Other rare diseases primarily impact quality of life and treatment can turn an sick unproductive person into a functional productive one. That's good for society, although you will probably have trouble justifying it by the numbers alone if you treat healthcare as an ROI problem. (return on investment)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Bristol-Meyers Squib has a 75% margin on their drugs. And almost 30% return on equity.
They like to blame R&D but one Summer I worked at one of their research labs. It was a very very nice place. Parts could have been from a country club. The head of the place helicoptered in from NY every morning - which is all considered R&D "costs". The cafeteria food was 5-star but cost as much as a McDonald's meal.
The only sucky part was the animal section.
I miss that place.
NICE." It's true, there isn't - but insurers handle this in the private sector.
We all know these drugs have an insane markup. The drug companies are getting rick because they set astronomical prices for drugs the might help people, even a little. And they get it because insurance is forced to pay for it, not individuals who could never come up with the money on an individual basis. We have created the problem by mandating insurance and then letting the drug companies pilfer it blind.
This is just another facet of the problem that drug companies use U.S. public funding for the research to help develop most of these drugs, then turn around and charge the American taxpayer more for the drugs than they sell them in other countries, both third world countries like the African nations and first world countries like Canada. And, of course, they spend a lot on expensive lobbying to buy politicians to make sure we in America don't get access to those drugs they sell in Canada.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Common statin's (for lowering cholesterol) can cost more than $700 for a 30-day prescription if you don't have insurance. I think the cost issue goes well beyond prescription drugs for rare diseases, and in fact, is more detrimental in a broader sense.
But, when we as citizens don't insist our politicians address campaign finance reform, policies favoring corporations will continue to guarantee price gouging will continue. Campaign finance reform should be made the top issue... Every. Single. Election.
The free market will fix itself. That's what libertarian fucktards always repeat. I'm still waiting for the day this will actually be true.
There is a far bigger systemic problem behind this than market gouging. Governments poor billions into medical research: the salary for medical researchers is 2-3 times that of scientific researchers and the government budgets for medical research far outpace those for science in many countries because it is politically easy to justify developing a new drug or a new treatment.
This is the long term problem behind spiraling medical costs. Money spent on developing new medical treatments end up costing society more and more money. In the past these costs were offset by scientific advances which lead to improvements in productivity which generate money for society. The long term solution is to spend less money on developing new and more expensive treatments and spend more money on the fundamental sciences which will give us the ability to pay for them. However I see little chance of this happening because nobody wants to hear about cuts in medical research funding.
The industry doesn't do much research. Not the expensive kind. They do a few clinical trials after the government has done the really expensive stuff (what's called "Basic Research", IIRC).
Also, what you're seeing here with these rare disease drugs is the style of capitalism popularized by Bane Capital: Find something undervalued and buy it up then extract the value for yourself. Usually this takes the form of liquidating the company. But in these cases they're selling life saving medicine. It's literally a matter of life or death (or a life worse than death). These are small markets with a high barrier to entry where the customers depend on the product to live. This is exactly the sort of thing no decent society would leave in the hands of unregulated capitalism. American on the other hand...
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for someone's medicine? I said "Force" there. Because if you're getting into single pay with taxes funding health care then you are effectively forcing me and everyone else to pay for their medicine. Maybe I want to, but shouldn't that be my choice? Shouldn't I decide if I'm going to give that money to a charity or not? What if I oppose the medicine being give (like the "Morning After Pill")?
I'm asking loaded questions here. I'm in favor of single payer because it's part of civilization. And I'm in favor of forcing people to join civilization for the same reason I'm in favor of vaccinations. But I've yet to hear a compelling argument for all of this. I've yet to hear anyone give an answer to the age old "Tax and Spend Liberals". Maybe "Slash and Burn Conservative"? But even that's not as catchy or "Truthy"...
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This is exactly the situation. Why healthcare is a for-profit effort, there will always be a balance between money and life. And we all know money is more important than lives to corporations (I'm looking at the Ford Pinto here)
"As Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer at SAREPTA THERAPEUTICS INC, Edward M. Kaye M.D. made $4,396,696 in total compensation. Of this total $494,585 was received as a salary, $249,704 was received as a bonus, $1,694,678 was received in stock options, $1,939,532 was awarded as stock and $18,197 came from other types of compensation. This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2015 fiscal year." So the people that need the medicine are dying, or going into absurd debt, or paying out of their ass for this medicine. All while the CEO of the company gets a $250k bonus and makes $500k/year....
Could you cite a few examples of where the government proved to be more efficient at producing a product or delivering a service, than a privately-run firm?
The hate towards the drug companies is misplaced — and whether they are sinfully greedy or not is irrelevant. The simple fact is, had they not existed, the drugs would not have existed — unavailable at any price.
If only K of something — anything, from LeBron's sneakers to life-saving medicines — is available despite there being N people desiring it, then whichever way you pick to distribute it:
N-K people will still not receive it — and no amount of "outrage" will help.
The only hope for the rest is that the second method — charging whatever the market will bear — will be chosen, because then the profits (however "obscene") may be used to produce more of the stuff... Incidentally, Capitalism is all about the second method and that is why we tend to enjoy an abundance of most things — to the point, where some people are already talking about "post-scarcity".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The cost of healthcare for the rest of the world will go up while it goes down for the US.
Nope, but we might see reduction in research and development of new drugs...
But in fairness, there is value to balancing how much money we spend on researching new drugs and how much we spend on treating people with existing drugs..Clearly, it's not cost efficient to develop drugs for rare diseases..
Or, maybe the end result is higher government subsidies for research and development, which probably could be more efficient economically than financing drug research and development through the stock marked.
Lower the production and compliance costs or increase the number of people with the rare diseases. The second one isn't possible so the first one is mandatory. That is within the FDA's control.
Bureaucrats will tend to want to do neither and to make everybody else pay for their phoney baloney jobs but that does nothing to improve market incentives and only winds up increasing costs further.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I take it you do not have health insurance, as if you are healthy you are paying for other people. Fuckwit.
Terrorism starts at home.
It's always super easy to propose spending money that doesn't belong to you, isn't it.
Also, single payer supporters frequently confuse the "right to life and liberty" with some imaginary "right to perfect health and no dire financial consequences ever". Only one of those is "civilization". The other is societal looting.
A little known secret: Most countries' governments arbitrarily set the price of drugs and medical devices during negotiations and force pharma and medical device manufactures to sell it at a loss (or simply not have access to that market). To make up for the R&D and marketing, they have to jack the price up in the US to make up the loss.
Yes, this sounds like something the US would be OK with :-)
Many of the big pharmas are European. https://www.tharawat-magazine....
The US treats drugs as commodities, subject to supply, demand, and buyer desperation. That's all. Europe does not, at least not as much as the US would like. If the US imposes a limit on prices what will happen is that companies will be forced to be more efficient, make less money, or let new players take their place in the market. All of those options are fine by me.
You understand that the American Revolutionaries never intended to set up a system where every single person had to opt-in for a tax. The issue was to have taxation with representation. You live in a representative democracy, which means that the obligation is that a majority of the elected representatives agree to the tax.
Trying to turn this into a moral issue is bizarre, since essentially your position boils down to "I want the right to abrogate any moral obligation I have to my fellow man, and that's totally moral!"
As it is, overall, the US has some of the worst overall health outcomes in the industrialized world, while it's health care system actually produces a larger overall drag on the national economy. So, if we're going to talk morals, you think it's somehow moral that overall people are more poorly served at greater overall cost, just because maybe you personally get to pay less?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The real reason why healthcare is so expensive in the US is because Americans want the "freedom" to have everything they want, but expect that someone else should have the responsibility of paying for it. This leads to attitudes such as:
"I want to eat the cheapest and unhealthiest food and drink as much soda as I want, and expect my health insurance to pay for my diabetes, heart disease, morbid obesity, and metabolic syndrome, because it's my right to decide what to eat."
"It's my right to feed my children whatever food I want. How dare the government suggest guidelines for what my kids should and should not eat. How dare they suggest I'm setting them up for a lifetime of poor dietary choices and health problems."
"I want the best health care possible, because I paid my insurance premiums and taxes for decades."
The broader issue here is not that orphan drugs are expensive--to be clear, they are very, very expensive--but that Americans are ignorant and uneducated, distrustful of science yet reliant on science for life-saving medications, smartphones, self-driving cars, nutritious food, clean renewable energy, and so on. They think vaccines are a government conspiracy, believe climate change is a hoax designed to prevent them from getting rich, and believe in a divine Creator that will grant them their wish to be personally wealthy if they simply have enough faith, and that if one does not have their material wishes granted, it is because they didn't give enough money to the televangelist who told them God would answer their prayers. These people complain that Obamacare is too expensive but when they get cancer, expect Medicare to pay for the chemo, radiation, and surgery.
In that context, is it any wonder that health care is expensive? Americans are hypocrites: they preach endlessly about "personal responsibility" but when it comes to actually being personally responsible, suddenly everything is Somebody Else's Problem And I Had Nothing To Do With It.
Drug development is expensive. It costs insane amounts of money to discover candidate compounds, then run through preclinical and clinical trials, then jump the pivotal Phase III hurdles. Orphan indications would never be addressed without giving the pharmaceutical industry an incentive to treat them. If one insists on applying a capitalist economic model to orphan drug development, this is how it looks. You can't claim to be in favor of free-market principles and in the same breath claim that this is the cause of crippling health care costs. This is what Americans ask for when they say that health care should remain a privatized system.
In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) determines the cost effectiveness, or value, of newly approved drugs based on their impact on quality-adjusted life years. These determinations inform the National Health System's (NHS) treatment-coverage decisions.
In other words, if it's too expensive to treat you and therefore not worth it, they decide you don't get the medicine. This is what folks in the US were referring to as "death panels". They're actually correct, but the reality is that in the US anybody who can't afford the drug is going to die, also.
Do you have ESP?
hoards vs hordes
TMYK!
The whole global drug development system needs to be changed. As it now the U.S. develops and the U.S. population is saddle with paying for most of the new drug research and development in the world. Once developed a drug that cost $50,000 p/year in the US will cost $800 in some other part of the globe. The whole R/D and economic system needs to evaluated. The US population is being unfairly burden with the high cost of the drugs.
Herd hordes' whores hoard hors d'oeuvres
I've got lots of examples. Fuck me.
Is it morally right to force people to buy insurance to pay for other people's medicine if they are healthy? The more expensive healthcare is the more money insurance companies make, since their margin of a bigger pie gets bigger. Is it morally right to create dysfunction in the market system so that consumers are insensitive to price signals? Your moral superiority doesn't have good answers to these questions.
Check out the net profit margins on many of the big Pharma companies. They're not obscenely high for the most part. Apple for example has had a profit margin of around 20% for the past few years.
Average profit margin in the last 5 years:
GSK=12%
Merck=9%
Abbot Labs=15%
Astrozenica 12%
Eli Lilly 13%
They're good for the most part, but not unbelievably amazing.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Why would they spend time money and effort forcing you to rely on them, when they could just spend it and any costs that would have been spent on you on the people who can't afford to go private?
Do you think they are stupid evil, to the extent that would provoke revenge murder, i.e. you killed my granny now die, just to support your idea of how they ought to think?
Would the organisation even survive in the face of the well monied politicly connected elites, who can afford private coverage, expensive enough to beat their offerings, if they tried?
Do you live in a lala land where anyone who wants to run things in a way you disprove of, miss-aimed or wrong as it might be, is a stupid monsters ogre who eats children's lives and inflicts suffering for fun?
We'd have to pass a law to do this, and we have sociopaths as politicians. As a result, it will never happen.
I've seen multiple stories about how a small number of Americans are responsible for most of the healthcare costs in the last week or two. These weren't part of the general healthcare debate leading up to the failed Obamacare re-write (I refuse to call it a repeal, they didn't have the guts to do that). They started springing up about a week or two ago.
Yeah, these stories might be true and all, but what I find disturbing is how they keep showing up all of the sudden. Coincidentally right around the time Bernie & co have a bill on the Senate floor for Medicare for All. It's pretty obvious if you're looking that somebody is firing propaganda shots off. But if you're not a news hound like me with a google feed full of politics you probably wouldn't have noticed. I'm guessing it's the insurance companies buying stories to shut down single payer, since single payer should shut them down...
Anyway, I'd like everyone ehre to realize there's a difference between Bernie trying to talk you into single payer and somebody pushing a pro-insurance narrative on the sly. Whatever your opinion on the merits of single payer vs paid insurance just know that your actively being manipulated.
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With the upcoming collapse of Obamacare
You've been watching too much TrumpNews. The "collapse," if it happens, only refers to there being no providers on the ACA-created health insurance exchange marketplaces. We can use scary words like "explosion" but the fact of the matter is that unless and until there are ZERO policies sold on the exchanges in the ENTIRE country, we're a step ahead of where we were in 2010, and that leaves aside every other reform in the entire act.
No, it's greed over people pure and simple. cancer treatments that cost $100k per treatment in the US vs $3k in Canada for the same drug by the same maker.
Arsewipes like martin shkreli and Elizabeth Holmes are not poster children, but the norm.
The US FDA went on a war against imported Canadian drugs a few years ago to increase profit to the US pharma cartel and their paid for elected pawns to ensure profit continues to roll in.
UW, the University of Washington is developing a cure, a real cure, for leukemia. In order to raise money for research, the rights were sold to a VC (vulture capitalist firm) who giggle with glee believing they can charge $500K per dose. Here’s the piece most people don’t realize – most health care policies contain lifetime maximums; usually $1m, $2M for the better, more expensive ones. These greedy jerks are going to consume ½ of someone’s life time’s healthcare in a single injection. Think about those implications. This is not about making health care better, more affordable, or improving the lives of people, this is purely about extorting life and death so a very, very few can have bigger houses and private jets. Welcome to ‘Merica 2.0.
When a faction in the US government propose an equivalent group to NICE, the people called them "death panels". Since, you know, that's what they are.
"You get to live; you get to die; you get a minor treatment - who knows, maybe you'll get lucky? Next!"
they're not doing the expensive part of that 2.5 billion. You are. With your Tax Payer dollars. Anyone who says they're spending that kind of money is just using clever accounting. Kinda like how Return of the Jedi lost money at the box office.
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Most countries' governments also ban drug companies from marketing. It's insane to come to America and see the amount of advertising there is for drugs.
That sounds a lot like what needs to happen because that's not a sustainable model. US citizens can't continue to bankroll everyone else in the world's healthcare AND defense. Please other governments of the world pick one. (We shouldn't be doing either, but I figure they'd let us keep manning the walls for them.)
Thank you Mylan overlords for draining my bank account and helping me lose more weight, since I can't afford to buy groceries this month again.
Haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I'll chime in. It only takes a bit of T.V. watching to notice that nearly every single drug commercial is actually TWO commercials. One to promote the drug and a follow-on spot to list every single side effect and remind potential customers they should tell their Dr. about their medical conditions prior to getting them to prescribe the drug. This seems to more or less double the cost of all drug-based advertising (even print ads must be larger to include all the disclaimers and fine print) while adding no value. You HAVE to talk to your Dr. to get the damn prescription and the Dr./Pharmacy has to inform you of the side effects. Imagine how much less they'd have to spend if the rules simply stated that all side effects and cautionary tales must be published on the company websites, rather than broadcast along side every advertisement.
That's a terrible example for this article as this was a drug that had been around for decades that just got approved in the US and is dirt cheap everywhere else. For the cost of doing trials and getting FDA approval, Marathon gets a 45x markup. Whereas previously, patients could buy this drug from overseas, now that it's approved by the FDA, they can no longer do that. So they have to pony up the $89K (minus whatever discounts Marathon offers to try and appease the mob). That's BS. The reform has to start at the FDA. If a drug is approved in a place like Canada, where I'm sure they're not just passing out hemlock and saying this might cure something, the process here should at the very least be shortened for approval and if the drug is already available from an existing company(ies), then they should not be handing out these sweetheart deals, like the one to Marathon, to essentially gouge all Americans with these ridiculous prices. The FDA and the Congress are complicit with the drug industry lobbyists for creating this environment where America pays far more for every drug than in the rest of the world. We're floating Big Pharma's profits and their marketing budgets because no one in Washington DC has the will to stand up and protect the American consumer.
You are suggesting drug prices in the US are related in any way to drug prices in other countries. The drug companies set their prices to maximize revenue, they make a profit in every country or they abandon that country.
Did you know that HIV transmission can be prevented with a pill?
Would it not be a good thing to HALT the spread of HIV (or at least slow its spread to below the threshold for it to remain in the population long term)?
Sort of like the effort put into to stopping smallpox and making polio rare?
Truvada PrEP is estimated to be greater than 99% effective.
Across the US border it costs about $70. But here? Something like $4,000+, unless your insurance covers it, then $600+.
Putting two generic medicines into a single pill warrants x50 price increase and a patent to cover that?
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
We build and maintain roads using taxes because it's expensive, has a large benefit to society, and is hard to pay for without destroying those benefits. We should do the same with drugs- all research, production, and distribution done by government. Doing so will eliminate the high risk to corporations (failed drugs=lost money), and ensure our healthcare dollars are only spent on costs not private helicopters.
show me your #s. I'm waiting... It's pretty easy to prove the point that they spend more on marketing than R&D with a google search. So show me a single, low user drug with 2.5 billion invested in it where the money came from the drug companies pockets.
Oh, and I've got family with cancer. The drugs that kept them alive were invented in Europe by the European governments because not a single US company would spend a dime on it.
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Poor pharmaceutical companies, they have to jack up the price! Otherwise they wouldn't have such fabulous profit margins, or be able to spend such an incredible amount of money in marketing! Imagine the horror!
entropy happens
I've made up my mind.
I would rather die and pass my savings on to my family than go bankrupt giving it all to Big Pharm.
I fail to see the point of living out your final years in poverty, just to gain a few more years of life out of it.
I would rather not prolong the misery thank you very much.
Make the patients pay for their own drugs. If they can't afford the price, the drug companies will be forced to lower the cost so that they can make money. This system is called a market economy. It is the system used to distribute food, cars and I-Phones. It ensures that the most goods get distributed to the most people the most efficiently.
The alternative would be to have a third party such an insurance company or government foot the bill. This will ensure drug companies will continue to raise the price to unbelievable levels because they can, and the bills will be paid. I mean why would the drug companies not continue to raise the price.?
Health care will continue to get worse because neither the repubs or democrats want to fix health care. Both paries receive big campaign donations from insurance, hospitals, drug companies, and lawyers to ensure the system does not work.
India just allows local producers to ignore US patents for certain drugs, their prices will remain low. If the prices go too high expect other countries to follow suit.
$89,000/yr for deflazacort? Big Pharm clearly has the US health industry blindfolded, bent over and reamed but good doesn't it? My son has Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy and is taking deflazacort for it. It hasn't been approved for general prescription here in Canada, but getting approval for it to treat DMD is a straightforward rubber stamp through the exceptional access program. Because it isn't formally approved, we have to pay for it and then get reimbursed for it, Also because it's an EAP drug, we're paying only a little over wholesale. Currently we pay 85$ for a three month supply, or 340/yr. That includes shipping from the pharmacy associated with the research and teaching hospital my son is being treated by.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
The US is also one of only a few countries that allows drug companies to advertise at all.
Before Obamacare, US had 60% cancer survival rate. And even higher rates for some of the better understood and more frequently screened forms of cancer. Britain's cancer survival rate at the same time was 30%. So I would not use Britain as a model for how to deal with expensive rare treatments.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Shouldn't the government have an obligation to limit the market price of such drugs? I'm sure the rapacious companies charging exuberant amounts for the drugs would yell "free market" to excuse their prices, but the truth is that a drug under anti-competitive patent protection does not exist in a free market. Since the government provides the protection against competition to the manufacturer, shouldn't the same government, whose primary obligation is towards its flesh and blood citizens, and not its corporate citizens, have the obligation to regulate the price of drugs used for the treatment of illness? To lose the price restriction, a company should be obligated to lose the protection against competition. That only seems fair, and a proper use of the patent system. Right now it seems to be broken and abused by the industry.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Bah. I don't know how many lost insurance over Obamacare but its more than zero.
Or how about they only broadcast the side effects on the commercial, and publish the benefits on the website?
Some things are just not worth it. Some people will have to not be healthy or even die as we can't spend all the world's resources saving them. In the US or any country we need efficient and economical treatment. When we waste time and MONEY on small problems instead of big ones, we hurt more people and our society. The US healthcare system is very inefficient as we pay doctors, insurers, hospitals, and pharma way too much for their efforts. That doesn't mean we get rid of the math and socialize everything, the math is right. We need to remove costs and make things cheaper and efficient, but we also need to realize fixing some people's health is a total waste and encouraging pharma to even solve it with outrageous prices helps no one. Doctors don't need two houses and pharma CEOs don't need ten, but some people can't be helped.
The VA has tried to kill me twice, after army medicine made the first effort and left me in pain for the rest of my life.
If you think healthcare in the US is expensive now, wait until Lockheed Martin takes their cut.
Awww....and you donit our of the goodness of your hearts,right ?
Empires cost money chump. Pack up all those bases and go home then. Cancel all those FTA's in your favor too.
What's that ? You don't want to ??
Then get the checkbook out.
As multiple other people here have posted, the pharma industry spends at least $2.5B in R&D per new drug. Also, almost all of that is spent in the US, where the vast majority of new drugs are researched. To attract talent, pharma companies generally put their R&D in desirable places to live, have nice facilities, and pay good salaries. When you have a team of ~1000 scientists and doctors working for 5-10 years on a drug, you're going to spend a LOT of money. Just the cost of capital to develop a drug is staggering. The easy answer is to pay people less, and convince them to work in cheaper facilities... The rest of the world tried that and now virtually all the drugs are developed in the US.
One way to do fix this is to focus on spinning out R&D efforts as startup companies. This places the financial risk on the scientists doing the work, but also gives them much greater rewards for success, and an incentive to keep costs low. That's the giant problem with pharma development and marketing right now: no one has any real incentives to keep the costs down.
There are R&D grants for orphan drug development, and there are patient advocacy groups that help with clinical trials. We need to be able to get to a future where a "successful" small pharma effort is one with $5-10M of annual revenue.
Hate to say it, but people don't seem to realize that health care costs money, and it may even require not financially covering certain treatments, like organ transplants, rare diseases, and MRIs for diagnosis ass-covering. If the American public cannot concede to common sense, no form of nationalized health insurance program will be fiscally plausible.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I must be missing something...
Why would the pharma company accept "selling at a loss" over "not having access to that market"? What kind of threat is that? "Give us your stuff, or else - go away"?
Much of what costs isn't in advertising to the public
It's in fishing jaunts for Dr.'s, payola to Bureaucrats, "Free" medical symposia to peddle the latest nostrum and "Free" contributions to Legislators
It's time to put regulations, real regulations on the drug companies.
Communist :) hehe
But yes, more government funding for research is the best way to keep drug costs down. IMO we don't have to do everything in the public sector, but finding a balance... Notably reducing the barrier to entry for new drug companies by making funds available, funding basic research with open publication, limiting patents, and using patents from publicly funded research to the benefit of the public.