Slashdot Mirror
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)
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.
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.
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.
The problem is not that we aren't spending enough money. The problem is the combination of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries getting all of the money they can out of anything they have with no limits. Even generic drugs that aren't under patent production are many, many times more expensive in the US than in other countries (one example my wife gave me last night is $0.18 per pill abroad, versus $30 per pill here - for a generic medication). If the pharmaceutical companies are not actively engaged in collusion and price-fixing for generic medications then I would be shocked. Additionally, they spend so much money buying legislators that it is effectively impossible to get any legislation passed which would force a resolution to this issue by capping the price of medications or making it easier for additional companies to manufacture generic medications and compete with the established players. The free market is obviously not working correctly when every company making a certain generic medication sells it for the same amount, or when generic drugs which are readily available in other countries are not available here because they would compete with products from established companies. There is an opportunity there for a competitor to sell it for less and undercut the competition and make money, but for some reason that doesn't happen. If the free market is not allowed to work, and instead there is price gouging going on, then it sounds like legislation is required to correct that issue and bring drug prices down as a matter of law. If anyone thinks that such a thing would limit development or force companies out of business then I would invite those people to look at the P/L statements for the major pharmaceutical companies. A good start may be to outlaw advertising to consumers for pharmaceuticals, followed by a way to cap prices on medication based on metrics similar to those used by NICE.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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 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...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You sound like a sociopath
That's just not true. We value human lives very little. What we value is the lives of our friends and families.
If your brother gets shot in Iraq, its a tragedy to you personally. If an Iraqi's brother gets shot, its a statistic to you. And the Iraqi thinks the exact same thing except in reverse.
This is a good part of why Americans are so resistant to a decent healthcare system.. Joe is happy to spout off things like "well I'm not sick and nobody I know is sick so why should I be paying for Jane from 6 miles down the road?" But of course if Joe gets sick himself a year later, suddenly he's bitching about the cost of doctors and medicine. Because now it actually matters to him personally. His life is worth paying for but Jane's isn't. And Jane thinks the same way about Joe.
Basically it all comes down to that "Monkeysphere" concept we hear about, combined with "greed solves everything" capitalism and some American-dream style eternal (if unfulfilled) optimism about a person's own potential.
Here's a problem with your assessment, we don't have a free market with drugs.
I know, that's my point. I said that if the free market was working, then we would see more competition and lower prices. The fact that we don't means that it is not working. The fact that no one is coming in to undercut prices on generic drugs that are not encumbered by patents is indicative of the fact that the free market is not working here. It might be evidence of collusion and price-fixing, or a situation making it impossible for competitors to enter the market.
Prescription rules, if you want even a common drug for a chronic condition you will need a permission slip from a physician. Why? Can't people figure this out on their own?
I understand that problem well. My wife is from Brazil, when we are there she can walk into any pharmacy and get whatever she wants, she can even consult with the people working there. There are certain limitations on what they're allowed to do, but they can sell her any of the drugs they have there. Many of those drugs are not even available in the US even though they do not have patents and are generic drugs. She can't get steroids that she needs for inflammation and other issues, and she can't even get the drug that works to get rid of her headaches without going to Brazil and getting it straight from the pharmacy without ever needing to see a doctor. She feels lied to after coming here and realizing that she cannot get the quality of care that she is used to from living in other countries, and the reason seems to be money, like so many of our other problems. So many people have their hands in the pie and what gets lost is actually providing good quality care to people who need it, even if it only means making drugs readily available like they are in other countries. She knows exactly what she needs, what works and what doesn't, and she simply can't get what she needs here. She feels lied to after hearing how great the US was supposed to be, and then getting here and realizing that it's all about money, and if someone can make money restricting access to health care then that's what they're going to do.
More laws will not fix this problem. The problem is too many laws.
Which laws do you think need to be removed in order to fix these issues?
If you think that there is price fixing then I ask you to prove it.
Really? You want evidence of a price-fixing scheme in a trillion-dollar industry? Well let me just hit Google, I'm sure there are signed documents online that will clear that right up.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black