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Price-gouging Maker of EpiPen Literally Said That Critics Can Go Fuck Themselves (gizmodo.com)
Back in August of 2016, the pharmaceutical company Mylan came under fire for jacking up prices of the EpiPen from $57 in 2007 to roughly $600 in 2016. The public backlash has been significant. Gizmodo adds: But the chairman of Mylan has a message for any critics: Go fuck yourself. Well, at least that's what we think he said. The New York Times has a new article about the fact that prices for the live-saving allergy medication haven't actually come down since last year. And the article has a rather strange way of describing the attitude of Mylan chairman Robert Coury. This is how the New York Times describes Coury's reaction to critics of Mylan's price gouging: "Mr. Coury replied that he was untroubled. He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves. Critics in Congress and on Wall Street, he said, should do the same. And regulators at the Food and Drug Administration? They, too, deserved a round of anatomically challenging self-fulfillment."
I've never been in anaphylactic shock, but I would imagine it would be particularly difficult to engage in the suggested activity while suffering from an allergic reaction.
Perhaps someone could correct me though if I'm wrong.
The epipen isn't the only player in the market, its popularity is due to schools support for it, as an easy way to administer the drug. If it is too expensive the schools should consider a replacement. And have this guy just blame critics in the poor house with a stack of epipens that he will sell at a loss.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
that his attitude comes back to bite him. I can just imagine the fun that social media could have with that kind of arrogance.
And then "well at least that's what we think he said." Oops. Your bombastic use of a word immediately discredits you. However, since it does appear that the article is saying that he actually said that, perhaps the term "reportedly" could have been used instead of literally.
Time to talk to Canada for prices.
At some point, this orifice at the negative end of the esophagus will be responsible for the untimely demise of a person who is mourned by someone with a rather low tolerance for bullshit of this kind, and this person of limited longanimity will rip said orifice a suitable replacement for the aforementioned orifice.
Preferably slowly, painfully and streamed via a service that many people can enjoy.
And nothing of value will be lost. Except maybe the YouTube video of it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do they have Dick Cheney on the board of directors?
At least one chairman who has balls to say what he actually thinks instead of hiding behind insincere excuses. On the other hand I hope he won't cry when his critics start using stronger language as well.
Now that patent rights are terminated with any domestic or foreign sale, per the SCOTUS Lexmark decision, pretty soon the market is going to be able to tell Coury to go fuck himself.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'll be in the minority here, but that's bad ass. A company leader that doesn't do PR is a breath of fresh air, even if he is a raging asshole.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Price controls would be needed to implement single payer. Knowing that 100% of your customers have insurance that pays 100% of the cost of medications is a green light for this type of price gouging.
Based on patents, they have the right to charge whatever they want. In fact, that is what the drug companies do as well. Which is why we need to re-do patents WRT medical items. In particular, we should lower the timeframe from 20 down to 10 for items such as general medicine, epi-pen, equipment, etc. At the very least, move it to the first 10 years from anybody, and then the second 10 years only from imports. The 2 exceptions need to be vaccines and most of all, antibiotics. We need to give real reason for development of both vaccine/antibiotics, rather than drugs that treat symptoms, or items that simplify life such as epipen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why? Let his company go under as people buy other products.
... is there another reason that is conveniently not being mentioned?
No one is forced to buy the product. I suppose the real question is why would he want to price the product out of the market. And don't say greed. If it was as simple as that my neighborhood bar would charge $500 for a pint instead of $5.
If the bar owner raised his price so high wouldn't you wonder why? I would (OBVIOUSLY) stop going there and I can't see anyone else going there either. So
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Time for us to beg Canada for drugs.
That is the wrong message to tell Mylan.
The right message is to write to your congressman and FTC how Mylan is gouging you the voter, and that the congressman and gov't are doing such a poor job keeping Mylan in line that Mylan feels comfortable telling their constituents to "go fuck themselves".
At very least, it opens up an opportunity for someone to fuck over Mylan, if only with compulsory political donations.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The shift key, as well as the "y" and "o", are free to use though.
Knowing that 100% of your customers have insurance that pays 100% of the cost of medications is a green light for this type of price gouging.
In a situation where 100% of all prices are paid by a single entity, that entity has all the power. What does a company do when they jack the rates up 500% and the government says ok, we won't pay you? They either drop their prices or go out of business. They could simply refuse to offer their product in the US, but the then government could simply declare their patent open for generics. There wouldn't be a need for direct price controls, but there would be de facto price controls in that all providers would be forced to sell at a price that the only buyer would be willing to pay for.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The Epipen disaster is squarely due to FDA's hubris, maintaining that every other drug regulator in the world is incompetent. If the FDA would accept generic-drug approvals from other first-world agencies, like those in Canada and Europe, we wouldn't have this problem. Understand that they are not approving the drug, which is already approved, but just approving the manufacturing process. The FDA insists on an expensive, redundant approval process that results in a non-competitive market that leads to gouging.
There is a difference between something being legal and something being a good idea.
The pharma and biotech industries as a whole want to avoid price regulations but this kind of behavior heavily pushes politicians to look at passing laws to do that for consumer protection. That is why when Martin Shkreli raised the price of an AIDS medication by 5000% another company started to manufacture the same drug and sold it at only slightly above cost. The intention was to stave off new regulations by showing they could deal with bad actors as an industry and not harm patients in the process. My understanding is that the same thing is being worked on right now to get some more auto-injectors approved and drop the price way down in order to prevent tis from being used to regulate.
The problem is that some drugs are seriously expensive to make. Some of them require some difficult processes that making enough of the drug for one person for one year can cost $50K and that does not cover the cost of R&D that went into it. Typically those drugs would then sell for $100K or so. If you have price caps then many drugs would just not be made at all because they are at the edge of our technology and we don't know of a cheaper way to make them. Especially with biotech drugs you have to connect together tens of thousands of atoms essentially perfectly. You need to make on the order of 10^24 of the molecules and your defect rate has to be 0.001%. There is nothing else on our planet that is manufactured to those kinds of standards and it is HARD and EXPENSIVE. The prices are coming down on them as technology gets better but mostly what happens is that even harder molecules are made.
It really bothers me when I see a company that makes a drug for $0.50 and then sells it for $100+ because it puts the entire industry at risk. I don't want to see DNA, RNA and protein based drugs going away because they no longer fit within price caps.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
It's nice when corporations (or rather, those who work for them) are kind and good to humanity.
Having said that, that's not what business is for. Business is for making money.
Like processes on a protected-mode OS, business must be regulated to the satisfaction of the citizenry. If we deem it important that corporations do not dump millions of gallons of toxic waste into the river, we should not rely solely on good will and bad press to deter them. We use the law, just as we do memory protection, to curtail them.
What Mylan did was legal. Each time a corporation does something egrigious that hurts a lot of people, odds are better we'll improve the protection mechanism we have in place.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The problem is they have a psuedo-monopoly due to the way prescriptions work.
The active ingredient in Epipens is epenephrine, however, when a doctor writes you a prescription for an epipen, it is SPECIFICALLY for an epipen, you cannot get epenephrine syringes instead, you can't get another autoinjector instead, it's ONLY for epipens.
However, if a prescription for epinephrine is given out, you have some choice over delivery methods.
So, what happens if the doctor won't give out a standard epenephrine prescription? Well, you have to either buy Epipen, or go without.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
This guy gets points for honesty, boldness, and openly admitting that he's in the top 1% of the world's amoral socio/psychopathic douche-bags. It's nowhere near enough to make up for what happened, but most people in his situation would lie through their teeth to try to paint a better picture for themselves and their company.
No one is forced to buy the product.
So, fun fact, in the US, if your doctor writes a prescription for an Epipen, you CANNOT choose an alternative delivery method. So yes, there are a good number of people forced to buy the product.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
It's more complex than that, if your doctor writes a prescription for an Epipen, you CANNOT choose an alternative delivery method. So yes, there are a good number of people forced to buy the product.
You would need to convince your doctor to write a prescription for epinephrine instead.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
I can't imagine that the chairman did the company any favors in the here and now by openly suggesting that people who criticize the company's price gouging can go "copulate with themselves", however.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If the government is so concerned, they could invalidate the patent(s) involved, and let the generics makers get involved in the auto-injectors. The drug itself is already a generic medicine. Let the 'free market' decide which product is better. The gov't, and patients, would be returning the fingers.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
I am being very sarcastic. When reading this article I wanted to see what this pr*ck looked like. Much to my surprise I was not disappointed. He looks like a 40 year old version of Martin Shkreli. Sometimes I don't know how people can live with themselves let alone manage anatomically challenging self-fulfillment. Really sad side of reality and it only gets worse. Sorry, folks this makes me sick for those who have to have this life saving "device" as it is put. Out...
Canada has price controls
Seems green-lit as it stands.
Well then we already have that. There are plenty of alternatives to what this product can do; and at cheaper prices than the old cost. Epipen is just the gold standard aka the best mouse trap so they calculated they could charge more and the government would still purchase.
No because there are alternatives that have the same result. Epipen is just a better version of delivery.
You ask your doctor to change the prescription. Also in some states the law is that pharmacists have the option of switching named prescriptions to generic.
It sure is, just not in the way you suggest.
Adrenaclick, 2 for $110. It was released last year.
At least he was honest. Can't say he lied. What he does is legal (although not ethical) and if people do not like it, they indeed should go either fuck themselves or change it that it isn't legal anymore.
If I drive 50KMH in a 50KMH zone and you think it is too fast, you can also go fuck yourself or change it that the limits are lower.
The legal part should be closer to the ethical part and that should be our way to say to him that he can fuck himself. Unfortunately we do not have a real say in laws. Fuck me, right?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No one is forced to buy the product.
The problem is people are. That's how they can get away with this shit.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Are you satirizing? If not, you have a very poor understanding of how the medical industry works in the US. Choice is among the last words one would use in healthcare here.
Now. That's interesting. I did not know that.
So - then wouldn't the solution be to change the law regarding forcing the delivery method? Sounds like corporatist (mercantilist for those more classically trained) erosion of the marketplace.
This would be an example where free market and socialists could combine forces. Combination of forces leads to more than "victories" it leads to understanding that the other is not necessarily evil, and can, in fact, be an ally.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
We just picked up the generic Adrenaclick from CVS for $12 after they automatically applied a $100 off coupon (even without insurance). The major difference between Adrenaclick and EpiPen is that Adrenaclick doesn't retract the needle after injection. If Mylan's pricing nonsense continues I think we'll see more people being trained on Adrenaclick than EpiPen just due to the cost.
Thalidomide undergoes racemization in the human body, so no matter how good your manufacturing process was, you would still end up with a mix bag of enantiomers.
This is the kind of article going around in my circle of people with anaphylaxis prone children. Seriously. Citizens of our once great nation are buying YEARS expired medication, second-hand, so their kids won't die.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/...
One family I know personally had to budget for a YEAR in advance in order to replace an expired pen... and by the way, you need 2 in order to be sure to not die.
So yeah if you are lucky enough to have insurance that actually covers the epi-pen... when yours expires, you can sell it for $100 or more.
That's really not what is being discussed here. We don't have to throw out the FDA's governance on general types of therapies, but why can't people import established drugs such as insulin or epinephrine from overseas? It sounds like unnecessary micro-management on the FDA's part. Or one could argue is that the FDA is just the strong-arm of the US drug manufacturers.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Umm... Why? Just scroll on by, if it bugs you. Hell, they are tame, compared to how they used to be. It doesn't hurt you. It's just words. You don't even have to read it, once you recognize it for what it is.
Offense is taken, not given.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Actually I did not know that one did not have a choice if so prescribed by the doctor. Another poster pointed that out.
Now, isn't that an indication that the health care market may be in need of deregulation?
In this case it is the regulation(s) that are the culprit.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Congress would invalidate that companies entire patent portfolio and put them all in the public domain.
Problem is that would require a congress that was not Morally bankrupt. And the USA is not capable of having that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Confusingly, they also used periods. They even used them properly.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The people who worked in the system decided that over-the-counter asthma inhalers should be available by prescription. Once or twice a year, I might need a inhaler for my bronchial asthma. I used to walk into the drug store to buy one. My bronchial asthma isn't severe enough to warrant a prescription inhaler.
http://getbetterhealth.com/asthma-patients-will-soon-be-required-to-get-prescription-inhalers/2011.10.04
My friend gave it to me as he was dying. It seemed very important to him that I have it.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
As a user of a patented drug that has skyrocketed in price over the past 10 years, I have thought about this problem quite a bit. The pharmaceutical industry follows the same business plan as the street dealer. The first hit is free. Luckily my costs have "only" tripled since 2005.
The costs climb dramatically over the last ten years of patent for broadly used drugs. In the early years, the drug is always reasonable. Once the victim is snared, the milking begins and continues until the patent expires and bio-substitutable alternatives appear. I propose the following:
All patented pharmaceuticals cannot rise in price any faster than the rate of inflation. If the manufacturer increases pricing over inflation, the patent is cancelled. The manufacturer had better price their meds at their expected rate-of-return in the beginning. This will prevent extortion on the back end of patents. This may price new meds out of reach, but there will be no more rape of the consumer and insurance carriers for meds that have been around for ten years.
If prices are too far out of reach early, there will be few adopters and no profits. Prices will have to equalize to reasonable numbers. Drug costs have risen to non-sustainable levels.
Literally
I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
Isn't it great that regulators like the FDA give the makers of EpiPen the power to fleece, screw and insult their customers while protecting them from any competition? Thank you, FDA, for watching out so much for the interests of the American public! We obviously need to give the FDA even more regulatory authority so that the FDA can nurture even more billionaires like Coury.
Patent Law doesn't allow the Government to just declare a patent open for Generics. There is a process but it's not quick. Meanwhile patients across the country would be without the medication because the government doesn't want to pay. Which in turn would lead to some bureaucrat deciding to just pay, after all there is no financial incentive or penalty for him or her to not authorize it and thus terminate the endless ringing of his phone by people complaining.
Then once the government is paying, the incentive to continue the expensive process to open the patents is stopped because the funds are needed to pay for the more expensive meds.
Single payer, especially if it's the government, will not control prices.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I don't see why there is even a discussion about this. Market forces should already have reduced Mylan's sales of EpiPen to ZERO. There are alternatives. MUCH cheaper alternatives! Let Mylan ask whatever they want, just don;t buy from them.
Anyone with a prescription can purchase Adrenaclick(the EpiPen generic) for $60 from CVS Drugs. With this coupon.
The real ignorance and travesty is that ANYONE still buys EpiPen.
Assuming that the House, Senate, and the President agree to make an example of a particularly badly-behaved corporation, are they able to place some or all of the effected patents into the public domain?
And obviously the insurance companies just paid the extra cost and sucked up the difference out of their own pocket? Hmmm... Gouging is gouging no matter who you do it to.
Yes, it's so refreshing to see a sociopath drop the facade and reveal his fundamentally evil and callous nature.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If Mylan has s patent on the delivery system:
Put epinephrine into a small tranquilizer dart and put it into a small, derringer-like pistol.
Nationalize the pharmaceutical industry.
And go back to 1997, and BAN ALL C(ONSUMER_TARGETED ADVERTISING OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. They spend *billions* on that, and what, you're supposed to tell your doctor what to prescribe?
With all the mergers, they're spending a lot less on actual research. And the research they are doing - a year or two ago, India refused to grant a patent to a major drug, because it was no advance at all on the existing drug... that was about to go out of patent.
Hell, go look at the wikipedia entry on quinene, for malaria - how much it costs to make, and the price in the US.
That's their big research. Basic research? Try universities, a lot of whom get funding for that... from the biggest and best (IMO) medical and bioscientific research organization in the world: the US NIH.
They can't for epipens. The problem is that their autoinjector is unique, therefore the pharmacies cannot substitute on their own even though the drug itself could have been. The doctor has to write the prescription properly for a generic. I waged this battle for months, it was an absolute shit-show.
So, fun fact, in the US, if your doctor writes a prescription for an Epipen, you CANNOT choose an alternative delivery method.
What you can do is call your doctor to inform that the prescription they wrote is unaffordable and they'll need to come up with a better solution.
Hope that helps. You guys seem to have a lot of problems navigating simple everyday matters.
Well, here's the thing. Legally, other autoinjectors are NOT generic versions of the epipen. As far as the law is concerned, Adrenaclick is a totally different type of medication, and is not a generic version of epipen. There is a "generic" version of the epipen, but it's made by the same company with almost the same cost.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
What most people cheering on the private market don't realize is that your tax dollars are paying for 90% of the sales of these auto-injectors. Schools and other public institutions are required by law to buy these auto-injectors to have on hand in the event someone has an allergic reaction. Much like sovaldi and the other recent record price drugs where 80%+ of the sales are to medicaid and government institutions (prisons) these drug prices are only possible because the government isn't allowed to negotiate pricing like the rest of the world.
Your tax dollars are what's being gouged. There is a simple fix, that is to remember that patents and copyrights are NOT capitalism. They are actually a government enforced monopoly that runs completely counter to a free market. The simple fix is to remove those government mandated monopolies in situations like this. There are also a better secondary fixes like allowing the import of drugs and medical devices which would allow these institutions to purchase the exact same thing from a country where it's sold for 1/100th the price.
It's comments like the chairman of Mylan that make me support the idea of removing their patents when they do shit like this. But the easiest and simplest fix is to allow government programs like Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate prices. In no time at all US drug and device prices would return to levels the rest of the world pays. But the republican party has been blocking such a fix for near on 20 year now, the result being US tax payers are being fleeced to line the pockets of drug executives.
Maybe we need a nice 150% excise tax on the salaries of drug company executives if any of their drugs sell for more than 110% of what Canadians pay.
Congress mandated this onto the FDA for precisely this reason. It's a massive wealth transfer from the middle class to the drug company investors and executives. They pay congress very well to maintain this blockade.
I think it's a pretty good thing we aren't depending on you for a cancer cure.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why don't you just tell them you can't pay? I thought no one could be turned away by an emergency room.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Do you have any references that show these drugs cost $50K to make? The pharmaceutical industry has a history of jacking up the prices of drugs well beyond cost. This is true even for generics. http://www.lifeextension.com/m... I have no doubt that they will increase the price even more for products with monopoly protection that they can bill to health care providers.
Chris Mesterharm
Take away all of Mylan's patents and place them in the public domain. Their trademarks too...
Corporatism != Free Market
Literally
His words have not been transmitted exactly, but the way New York Times described them strongly suggests that he, in fact, literally used the f-word:
"He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves."
With English language's limited number of words in this area, I can think of only way to say that "using colorful language".
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Questions:
1. Now that you are using company X's product are you medically unable to use company Y's?
Is that why it's "reasonable" at first?
If so, that is an interesting launching point for regulation. It could (and would) unite both Libertarians and Socialists. That combination is very powerful and ought not be ignored. (This is one of the many reasons ANTIFA is so pathetic.)
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It's not so much as you are stuck with an epipen, so much as these are controlled substances, and can only be given out upon the guidance of a MD. If the doc doesn't prescribe the drug itself with a bunch of idiot friendly dosage instructions for each purmutation of the products on market, you won't get it. It is just easier for docs to pick the easiest to administer and popular ones. This applies to many other drugs. Most other countries have far more relaxed rules, putting part of the power in the hands of the Pharmacy. And the regulation isn't so much a safety issue in as much a liability issue. A misunderstood perscription means an expensive lawsuit for the hospital. Rx can dispense what they want too, but if they don't follow the doc to the letter, they are open for liability. Why take the risk, don't think, be a robot?
The regulations, education, equipment, and medicine make healthcare expensive but there isn't too much wiggle room there to cut costs. Some deregulation such as buying from Canada, Japan, or EU make sense. Some in provider liability limits. But most other stuff appears valid ROI; the labor is just expensive in the US.
But there is a LOT of paper pushing, overhead, and simple waste in the healthcare service field. And it's not about digitalization. The processes themselves are totally messed up here. There are many examples, but to have a simple 15 minute outpatient operation in the US, it takes 16 positions talking to the patient and 3-4 weeks to schedule. In countries like Canada, UK, and India (at international hospitals) it takes 1 week (not counting initial consultation) and 7-8 positions.
About 1/2 the extra positions are redundant database entry positions, and the other are backend billing & payment related. And each of these positions have multiple people in them (you might talk to one on day 1 and another day 2). Each person upon introduction goes through a standard safety checklist to reduce chances of mixups. Safe, but takes time => cost.
The data entry equipment is attocious! It was clearly designed for and focused on generating an invoice, seek payment, and avoid liability. There are tons of paper work that almost nearly all goes into different DBs collecting essentially the same exact information. And although you sign information release waivers at each provider, the systems don't talk to each other but actually pass through a meat bag, printer/fax, meat bag, and shredder/file cabinet. Liability waivers are the only diffs in the info gathering.
Then you add on the insurance industry and they are more inefficient. Most of the paper work above is for them. But imagine a store that charges $10 for a pen but says that it only costs $2 if you are lucky to belong to a set number of clubs (club will have you pay $0.25 of that) and live in certain states?!? No other market/industry has shit like this. Oh and you can't know how much the pen will cost you till 3 weeks after you buy it!! It could be $0.25 or $2 or $10! We live in a world where Amazon can tell me how much the 5 current Chinese vendors of a pen released yesterday will charge me AND the day it will be delivered before I pay. I can buy/sell millions of dollars worth of stocks and pay all my utility bills in minutes with literally a few clicks. But healthcare as a service is still... nonexistent.
At least one chairman who has balls to say what he actually thinks instead of hiding behind insincere excuses. On the other hand I hope he won't cry when his critics start using stronger language as well.
What you call "balls" I define as Corporate Arrogance, and quite frankly, I'm sick and fucking tired of it.
It's amazing how we have anti-monopoly laws on the books, and yet we don't really do a damn thing from stopping mega-corps from buying 90% of the market, and colluding with the remaining 10% that comprise the remaining mega-corps. True competition is dead or dying, and the arrogant attitudes demonstrated by the worlds largest corporations prove it.
I can only hope that 10 companies worth of real competition are birthed from this cocksuckers arrogance to compete directly against the EpiPen, and he's forced to eat his words standing in front of the shareholders explaining why revenue has tanked.
Capitalism and Greed does not justify this kind of shit attitude that has created Corporate Arrogance. And it's high time consumers stop bending over and simply taking it when it happens.
In the United States, if a doctor prescribes a specific brand of medicine, then the pharmacist *must* use that brand. Conversely, many doctors prescribe "Epipen" for the same reason people use the word "Kleenex" to refer to a facial tissue, or "Xerox" to refer to a photocopy; it's by and away the most popular brand to the point that the brand becomes synonymous with the non-branded name for the product. The best thing that can be done is to educate people who rely on epinephrine injectors to ask their doctors not to write prescriptions specifically for Epipen. 99+% of the time the doctor won't have an issue prescribing a brand other than Epipen.
Bust his useless patent and let the generic manufacturers flood the market. The patent on such an obvious copy of the US Army nerve gas antidote injector was wrongly issued anyway.
Nicely said. Wish I could mod up.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Literally
I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
Since copulate has never been classified as "colorful language", I'd say there's a very strong chance that the person in question here literally said Go Fuck Yourself.
Not even sure why editors chose to go all PC describing an event that was far from PC. Hell of a lot easier to call a horse a horse.
For the biological type drugs (DNA, RNA, protein) I don't have any sources that I can share. Biotech drugs are all very expensive due to things like chromatography resin, complex filters and the stability of the molecules. Some of the manufactures do have prices for some of these components on their websites which can be used for estimates.
One of the things you can look at though is that generic biological drugs are usually 10% cheaper or less. This shows there is often not much room to drop the price.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
I think it's a pretty good thing we aren't depending on you for a cancer cure.
While this is true, the statements did offer one bit of clarity for the masses.
This describes exactly why there will never be a cancer cure.
I agree with this entirely. The government should be bargaining for drugs and it should be doing that collectively across all the insurance options it covers. Medicare, medicaid, congressional insurance, fbi insurance, military insurance etc. should be bargained together to get better prices.
I also want to see penalties for executives that abuse their power.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
It might happen under any other president, but it won't happen under this one. Unfortunately for the next 3.5 years we will have to pursue other options.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Just to address that site also all the drugs listed on that site are traditional pharmaceutical drugs, None of them are biologic drugs. It is very hard to make a biological drug in pill form since your stomach takes proteins, DNA and RNA apart and that destroys the drug. Biological drugs require special climate control and injections, they are also massively more complex to make.
Most pharmaceutical drugs are made of 50 atoms and are made with a chemical process. Biological drugs are normally tens to hundreds of thousands of atoms and are normally manufactured using genetically engineered cells and then purified. This makes them VASTLY more complex and expensive to make. The more atoms you connect the more likely a mistake is to occur and mistakes are often lethal.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
As my links shows, even generics are often outrageously overpriced. I'm sorry, without independent evidence I find it hard to believe claims made by pharmaceutical companies on price. If generics sometimes have markups of over 5000%, then why would they decide to have only a 100% markup on a patent protected medication. Given that medicare must pay, the only thing stopping the pharmaceutical companies is public outcry.
Chris Mesterharm
Bravo. THAT is the proper usage of the word "literally".
No one is forced to buy the product.
This is demonstrably untrue, which is why the company can charge a criminal amount of money for it.
There is precedent to turn a private entity into a government operated public entity, and back again. For example if a business provides a service vital to the community, and the business is hostile and uncooperative to the needs of the people.
Remember kids, eminent domain is not limited to real estate and can be applied to any other form of property. You operate your business as long as the people feel it is a mutually beneficial relationship. We prefer a laissez-faire approach because we usually find that over regulation bogs down growth, and most people want businesses to grow. But again this is a position people generally agree to because it is believed to be mutually beneficial (and personally I think this is mostly correct). You have no special right to operate a business, it is not a natural right, and an individual business has no guarantee that it can operate in the same fashion indefinitely.
It's a line to walk between complete state ownership of all property and special cases that are handled under exceptional circumstances and are somewhat temporary in nature. I think most of us don't want the government to operate all businesses directly, that has worked out badly in many other countries. But we've had success in breaking up companies, restructuring companies, and redirecting assets of a business or industry to address public concerns. Proceed carefully and with limits, and try not to view everything as black-and-white. And try to consider details rather than apply everything rigidly to every situation.
Now, isn't that an indication that the health care market may be in need of deregulation?
Just the opposite.
Why do you think it could be challenged?
In Eldred v. Ashcroft, the court affirmed that Congress is sovereign in settings patent and copyright terms.
If Congress is sovereign in lengthening the term(s), would not Congress be sovereign in setting any terms they choose to zero?
From the wiki: "However, the major argument for the act that carried over into the case was that the Constitution specified that Congress only needed to set time limits for copyright, the length of which was left to their discretion."
If zero doesn't work, how about 3 months?
I have no doubt biologic drugs should be more expensive. The argument is about what kind of markups they get and what kind of economic pressures will limit these markups. One traditional drug mentioned "costs" $80 a year and is "sold" for $3036 a year. It would not surprise to find out that a particular biological drug costs $1000 and is sold for $100,000. Of course, I'm just making this up, but without evidence otherwise, it seems in line with what these companies do.
Chris Mesterharm
So. Part of the problem is that regulation forces people to act against their better interest. And you are against said regulation - but you say removing said regulation is not a good idea.
Got it.
Actually, I really don't.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Since the USA controls patents within the borders of the USA, why not release the patent to the public and tell the makers of the Epipen to go fornicate with themselves while their heads are up their asses?
There are plenty of people working on a cancer cure, and there have been massive advances over the last couple years. If anything, capitalism hampers something like cancer research because treating it is more profitable than curing it and longer treatments are more profitable than short ones. Fortunately we have donation and tax driven organizations such as the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Health working on it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Another slew of misguided comments telling us how the government is going to save us from the evil corporations.
Nationalize the pharmaceutical industry!
Invalidate all of their patents!
Execute the CEO on national television!
Or any other mindless, brute force government "solution".
How can an Epipen in the USA sell for 4X-5X as much as it does in Europe or Canada when it wouldn't cost more than a few dollars to ship one to the USA? In the age of online commerce and air freight, that price difference should not exist. But, thanks to the U.S. federal government, it's illegal to import or re-import an Epipen or any prescription drug. People in the USA are therefore forced, to pay ridiculously inflated prices, and in effect, subsidize prescriptions drugs for the entire rest of the world. Repeal the government ban and those price differences disappear. Other countries might end up paying more, but people in the USA would pay substantially less.
Don't argue that we need more government to address a problem that wouldn't exist if we had less government.
Questions:
1. Now that you are using company X's product are you medically unable to use company Y's?
Is that why it's "reasonable" at first?
Company X's product appears to be the only one that works for me. I have tried other products in the past, but none work as well. The patent has recently expired, but so far no generics have yet hit the market.
The "reasonable" statement referred to the cost when it was new. As the patent nears expiration, drug makers raise the price as they know generics are coming. My medicine costs (which were high but manageable) tripled. Last year, my one prescription completed my out-of-pocket costs for my high deductible plan by itself. This is a medicine that will be 1/10 the price in five years and someone will still be making a huge profit. There are already three generic makers awaiting FDA approval and more in the wings.
"we think" >_> oi
There are plenty of people working on a cancer cure, and there have been massive advances over the last couple years. If anything, capitalism hampers something like cancer research because treating it is more profitable than curing it and longer treatments are more profitable than short ones.
This is basically exactly my point.
Fortunately we have donation and tax driven organizations such as the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Health working on it.
Working on it only describes yet another method of securing millions in funding. The true test has yet to be performed; what will they actually do when they find a cure for a disease that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in recurring annual revenue, along with creating hundreds of thousands of deaths every year? (which the latter can be oddly measured as a benefit by government)
Perhaps that test has already happened. In that case, we already know the answer.
This doesn't fix the problem, but a good pharmacist will call the doc and get a modified rx. A really good one will suggest doing so.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Thalidomide?? Give me a break. The FDA has been trading on thalidomide forever, pretending that non-US regulators are utterly incapable of learning from the past. So where are the other thalidomides that those European imbeciles have let through? The truth that the FDA will not admit is that thalidomide is a sad part of the past that will not be repeated. But, bureaucratic fairy tales are immortal. As long as they had some grain of truth at one time, no one can ever contradict them.
There are many people in the world who legitimately care about the others around them and about saving lives.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
At the risk of sounding callous, if it costs $50K per dose to make a drug, it might be reasonable to state that no feasible treatment exists at this time. We perform cost/benefit analyses all the time, but not when it comes to health care. This is a difficult subject, but is seems to be a conversation we are not even capable of having at this time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html
It's bitztream, the autism-hating, Musk-hating, custom EpiPen-hating Slashdot troll!
Congress merely has to mention the word " regulation " and the rest of the Big Pharma Execs will send a couple of guys to " talk " to him about why he should keep his prices to something that doesn't draw so much attention.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
When TV, Microwave, cars etc first came out they were very expensive also. The costs of these drugs are coming down as new technology is developed but if we stop trying to make them the costs won't come down. Also it would be about $50K/year to make not per dose for some of the most expensive drugs. Making these things is on the very edge of what our technology can do right now and it is doing a lot to drive forwards our understand of chemistry and molecular dynamics. As our understanding improves we learn faster, simpler and cheaper ways to make these drugs. The costs are coming down on biotech drugs it will just take some time.
This is something I wish we could actually work on as a species though. Most of the research to bring the costs down are being done by manufacturing companies and the hardware companies. I wish we could get governments working together to help fund new method development designed to lower costs of making these drugs. Some of the new technologies that may or may not work are so expensive that no one company can pay that alone and that slows down development tremendously. When the cost to develop a new method is greater than the cost of bringing a single new drug to market (and most bring only a few drugs to market per year) it quickly becomes too big of a risk to do it. Often the expenses are so high in developing a new drug that for the smaller companies 1 or 2 failed drugs will end the company and even the larger ones take a huge hit for a drug failure. Adding fundamentally different method development to that adds another dimension to the problem.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Sorry, but you're the one who's misguided. This is a case where we need more regulation. Right now we have legalized corruption because we are afraid to limit what public officials can do after they quit their government jobs. They go from running the FDA to being paid millions a year as "consultants" for the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, the government does whatever they want. Even if you somehow managed to fix it and cut all of the bad regulations, a few years later, you'd end up with the exact same thing again. When big pharma is paying millions to the people who write rules for them, they're going to get what they want.
All I can think is that this guy is trying to bring down the rotten Pharma system from within, and possibly become a martyr in the process! How else will govt become involved unless someone makes them look ridiculous?
I think this guy is out of his head, and , i think it is a response to his alleged (and settled for $465milliion payback) medicaid/medicare fraud for over billing state payback sources. I know it was back last august or in mid 2016 the company got accused of this type of fraud and called it 'price-gouging' at the time. I only saw a part of the NYT article which indicated gestures and verbiage used by R.Coury who was called chairman or ceo i forget. I am not clear whether it was his reply that started the investigation or whether his reply was after being investigated, and ultimately settled for that reputed $465million us bucks. I am not able to verify this but did read it recently which is why i am out of sync with it all.
A defect in a molecule like this is one atom wrong. A cpu is not built to those tolerances. You can have many atoms wrong and have a chip still pass since the tolerances are fairly large on this kind of scale. Molecules also have to have the right shape so you have to have all the atoms but also the right isomer which makes life even harder. Most biological molecules are left handed versions and right handed versions can be deadly.
Modern cpus even have issues where cores can be marked bad and sold as a lower end chip or sold at a lower clock rate depending on the type of failure. There are just far more things that can go wrong which still allow the chip to be sold which you can't do for a biomolecule.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!