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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.
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.
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.
The majority of drug makers spend more on marketing than R&D
love is just extroverted narcissism
The various drug companies spend 3 1/2 x as much on advertising and marketing as research
The actual ratio is about 1.8 to one, but still an unreasonable amount considering all the taxpayer subsides that these companies receive. Much of that is spent marketing directly to doctors in ways that are nearly indistinguishable from just bribing them to write prescriptions.
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.