US Drugmaker Raises Price of Vitamins By More Than 800% (ft.com)

David Crow, reporting for the Financial Times: A US drugmaker is charging almost $300 for a bottle of prescription vitamins that can be bought online for less than $5, in the latest attempt at price gouging in the world's largest healthcare market. Avondale Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Niacor, a prescription-only version of niacin, by 809 per cent last month, taking a bottle of 100 tablets from $32.46 to $295 (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source), according to figures seen by the Financial Times. Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the version approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat high cholesterol. Avondale, a secretive Alabama-based company, put the price of Niacor up shortly after acquiring the rights to the medicine in a so-called "buy-and-raise" deal -- a strategy made famous by Martin Shkreli, the disgraced biotech entrepreneur.

Comments

If you want Vitamin B3

[viperidaenz]

Eat Vegemite.

Today's translations:

[hwihyw]

"Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the [overpriced prescription] version"

Translation: Doctors get a kickback from prescribing a vitamin. Clueless patients fill the prescription and send it to their insurance. Everybody loses except doctors and drug companies.

"approved by the US Food and Drug Administration"

Translation: FDA approved vitamins that other vitamin manufacturers either cant get approval for or have to spend a fortune to get.

So drug company gets a government monopoly on a vitamin that doctors are all too eager to prescribe to their patients for $300 a pop.

Re:Today's translations:

[hwihyw]

And you can google for websites which independently test various vitamin/supplements. (https://labdoor.com/rankings/multivitamins). Reputable companies which provide quality vitamins/supplements are dime a dozen, its not rocket science. Also note that non-prescription vitamins and drugs ("capitalism in action") are dirt cheap, versus FDA approved prescription drugs (government in action) such as Niacor, Epipen, etc are only affordable to lottery winners.

Re:Today's translations:

[crunchygranola]

Prescription niacin does have a different formulation from over-the-counter niacin and more importantly, you are guaranteed it will have exactly the amount of niacin it says on the label.

Looking up the composition in manufacturers labelling, that is not true in this case. This is a perfectly ordinary 500 mg of niacin in a perfectly conventional tableting composition (croscarmellose sodium, hydrogenated soybean oil, magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose). There is absolutely nothing special about this.

And 500 mg of niacin is not some special calibrated dose, nor is the body sensitive to the exact amount of niacin ingested. The dosing for chlolesterol treatment is basically to take it in large excess (1000-3000 mg/day), the body excretes the excess.

And I googled "vitamin fraud" and found no indication that there were any problems with vitamins from name brand manufacturers (off-brand generics are of course problematic).

So none of your reasons are applicable in this case. Indeed this looks like an invitation to separate corrupt MDs, profiting from kick-backs, from real doctors who care about their patients. All a real doctor need do is recommend a name-brand niacin tablet as a replacement. Even at the pre-jack-up price of $33 a bottle they should have done that. The special name on the bottle is worth little or nothing/

Re:Today's translations:

[tehcyder]

Monopoly pricing is not capitalism in action. Fraud is not capitalism in action.

You're right, it is unregulated capitalism in action.

Without laws to discourage and punish it, fraud is just another way of making extra profit. And any business would love to be a monopoly given the chance.

MD here

[Anonymous Coward]

"some doctors still prefer to use"

If your doctor does this, just find a new doctor. There is no good reason to put up with this.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations. In just a few words, you managed to betray a staggering amount of ignorance with regards to;

1. vitamins or their "development"
2. socialism
3. life expectancy in "socialist" countries (hint: it's higher and increasing) such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, compared to USA (hint: it's lower and decreasing).
4. health care costs in "socialist" countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, compared to USA.

I suppose we can only blame the - equally - sorry state of education in the USA.

Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit!

[Dutch Gun]

These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains.

How about this? Give the FDA the power to investigate cases of rampant profiteering due to any medical-related patents. If a company is found guilty of profiteering, all patents related to the case are invalidated. Patents are a grant by the government (and the people it represents) to protect original research, which we want to encourage. But when companies abuse that private-public contract, they should be punished accordingly by the loss of those patents.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[Dorianny]

Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.

Tell that to the Colleges and Universities that actually perform most biotech research, largely backed by taxpayer funds. Socialize costs and privatize profits now that's good old American capitalist ingenuity for you

Re:blame government

[Applehu Akbar]

Goverment regulations cause this problem. Now that we are getting rid of NObamacare, this problem will go away. GUARANTEED.

This new administration could have been an opportunity to bring open-market forces to medicine. But so far, I see no indication of this happening. If anything, the swamp is getting deeper.

Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit!

[Dorianny]

These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains .

These "idiots" specifically target Medicare which is forbidden by law from doing cost/benefit analysis or from negotiating costs, which means that while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.

This of course is by design, Big Pharma spends a lot of money on lobbyists and campaign contributions to keep the gravy train rolling

Dream on

[aepervius]

Ever heard of Bayer ? Or Merck (I am speaking of the german one, not the US one It was a german company before the nationalization of 1915) one of the biggest pharmaceutical company ? And yes it does research all over the world, include Darmstadt near where I live. Whoever modded you insightful has no fucking clue and just acted out of the stupid US ideology that the word socialism is bad and an insult, when in reality the US practice some form of socialism, they jsut don't recognize it.

Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit!

[harvey the nerd]

The Martin Shkreli case is about a 70-80 year old drug that was "re-monopolized" under FDA regulations, raising its price over 10,000x. The basic patents are looooong expired. The FDA is not a solution, it is a huge source of the problems - Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man, ya know!

Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit!

[fahrbot-bot]

... while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.

Here's my complaint. After my wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor (GBM) the day before Thanksgiving 2005, she was prescribed Temodar for her chemotherapy treatment. The list price for one month of treatment (literally, one bottle of pills) was $11,000 US. The price using my BC/BS was $1,100 (10% copay) and the price using her Optima HMO was $40 -- and she would have required several months of treatment. If the drug maker can afford to sell drugs at the reduced/negotiated price to those people with insurance, they can afford to sell it at that price to everyone. Anything else is simply greed.

Susan died seven weeks after diagnosis in Jan 2006, having never finished that first bottle of meds.
Remember Sue...

A side note about that particular medication. The label warned to avoid handling the pills and breathing any pill dust as it can cause lung cancer. Really nice stuff...

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[angel'o'sphere]

You are an idiot.

In European countries etc. you are supposed to get drugs by a prescription. Not by "buying them cheap" in a drug store.

Of course they are available ... but not for "sale" to medicate a kid with out professional supervision, moron.

In Asia, I pay 2 cents per pill for an "obsolete drug" that stops some common forms of cancer metastasis but is unadvertised
Care to name that drug, so the rest of the world can survive cancer metastasises, too?

Re:Exactly?

[angel'o'sphere]

Most vitamins don'r degrade at all.
Why would they?
Relatively constant temperature, dry, no light. How do you guys think stuff can "degrade" in such conditions?

Kid: "Hey mom! Look at this! This Himalaya salt has a 'best consume before 2022' date! It must be really good!"
Mom: "yeah, we are so lucky! They dug out this perfect fine salt just last year, after it spent millions of years there! Just before the expiring date!"

Ho boy

[rsilvergun]

Doctor's prefer this because you don't always know what you're getting when you buy OTC vitamins. They're largely unregulated. When you buy prescription vitamins you know exactly what you're getting because they're now fully regulated by the FDA. Source: I've had close family members with cancer who've been prescribed vitamins.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[interkin3tic]

It was discovered in 1873 at a public university.

I'm really flabbergasted at the trolls on this story. I mean for fucks sake, how do you imply capitalism was responsible for vitamins being "developed?"

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[tbannist]

You forgot to quote the results and conclusion:

Results. The United States accounted for 42% of prescription drug spending and 40% of the total GDP among innovator countries and was responsible for the development of 43.7% of the NMEs. The United Kingdom, Switzerland, and a few other countries innovated proportionally more than their contribution to GDP or prescription drug spending, whereas Japan, South Korea, and a few other countries innovated less.

Conclusions. Higher prescription drug spending in the United States does not disproportionately privilege domestic innovation, and many countries with drug price regulation were significant contributors to pharmaceutical innovation.

To good to be true?

[TiggertheMad]

In Asia, I pay 2 cents per pill for an "obsolete drug" that stops some common forms of cancer metastasis but is unadvertised, ignored and/or unavailable in most of the world. This saves me $20-30,000 a month in the US for a biotech drug.

Any why is that I wonder? An obsolete miracle drug that stops the spread of common forms of cancer, it is cheap to make, and nobody outside Asia makes it or uses it... Doesn't that sound a little fishy to you? At what point does your bullshit detector go off? Asian 'medicine' is notorious for all sorts of worthless quack treatments and the FDA was created to keep useless, dangerous, and addictive medicine away from people. They aren't perfect, but they do a pretty good job of that.

If you have a real condition that is treated by this 'medicine', I am happy for you and I wish you a long life. But you should really read what you wrote and think carefully about why the entire rest of the world isn't using this miracle drug.

Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.

[serviscope_minor]

I'm currently living in the United Kingdom. Within five minutes' walk of my home are three places - one pharmacy and two shops - where I can buy vitamins, with no prescription.

They also sell prescription strength ones for which you do need a prescription. If you get low on Vit-D it's not all that unusual to get prescribed some.