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China Negotiating For Cheaper Cancer Drugs (reuters.com)
hackingbear writes: "China's medical insurance regulator will begin negotiations with domestic and overseas pharmaceutical companies to lower prices of cancer drugs in a bid to cut the financial burden on patients," reports Reuters. "The State Medical Insurance Administration said it was preparing to include more cancer drugs on its list of medicines eligible for reimbursement, and said 10 foreign and eight domestic pharmaceutical companies had expressed a willingness to work with the authority."
Unlike India, or what we may have been told, China enforces pharmaceutical patents rigorously. Recently, the Chinese box office hit Dying to Survive, which told the real life story of a leukemia patient/businessman put on trial due to smuggling imitation drugs to help fellow patients who cannot pay the exorbitant cost of a drug produced by a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has brought in huge revenues and rave reviews since the movie was released on July 5. Last year, China forced two rounds of NRDL negotiations after seven years of stasis. More than a dozen cancer drugs, including AstraZeneca's Iressa and Roche's Herceptin, are now covered by the country's insurance program, but only after the companies agreed to huge discounts -- a typical move trading lower prices for higher volume. Demand for Herceptin, for example, surged after the discount and triggered a national shortage.
Unlike India, or what we may have been told, China enforces pharmaceutical patents rigorously. Recently, the Chinese box office hit Dying to Survive, which told the real life story of a leukemia patient/businessman put on trial due to smuggling imitation drugs to help fellow patients who cannot pay the exorbitant cost of a drug produced by a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has brought in huge revenues and rave reviews since the movie was released on July 5. Last year, China forced two rounds of NRDL negotiations after seven years of stasis. More than a dozen cancer drugs, including AstraZeneca's Iressa and Roche's Herceptin, are now covered by the country's insurance program, but only after the companies agreed to huge discounts -- a typical move trading lower prices for higher volume. Demand for Herceptin, for example, surged after the discount and triggered a national shortage.
This is how Australia does it.
The PBS - Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - provides heavily subsidised prescription meds to any with a script from a Doctor (and super cheap for certain categories like Age Pensioners, disabled etc).
The catch is, pharmaceutical companies have to try and get their drugs on the PBS, and to do that they have to offer up evidence that their drug is better than those currently on the PBS, and quantify the extra benefit. For some drugs (like psychiatric meds), just show ANY benefit over placebo is a huge hurdle. Then quantifying the benefit to tax payers to justify what gets paid per pill.
Sometimes it limits the quick adoption of new drugs (although there are other paths for experimental treatments), but the main thing it provides is a science based monopoly buyer. The drug companies don't get to artificially court demand, and extract super high margins without showing they're worth it.
Oh, and it is illegal to advertise prescription meds in Australia. None of these ads full of older gents "Talk to your Doctor today about Cialis."
The system is very effective.
I understand that finding, testing and indeed certifying new drugs is costly. I have worked in the certification world for 15 years.
I also understand that a company needs to make a profit.
Having said that, a drug company is not the same as a company like Apple or Samsung or Volkswagen.
You can live without your iphone, so if you cannot afford the 1k price of an iphone..well...don't buy it.
Can you do the same with that Hep-C cure? With AIDS drugs? No, you need them to survive. You will literally die if you do not get them. So, as we have seen many, many times over the years, old drug patents are purchased by third parties and the price is increased by, often times, more than 1000%.
Or a super computer has slightly varied and already existing drug and a slight improvement is seen for MS patients. So, these are sold for $3000 per treatment.
This is literally holding the public hostage.
Sure, the assholes may argue... you can choose not to take it. Let us see your opinion when your little girls gets cancer (god forbid it) and you choose not to pay the 25000$ treatment because it's not fully covered by the insurance.
In my opinion, it is fucking disgusting that this is allowed to happen. Utterly fucking disgusting. I would argue that anyone who thinks it is reasonable that drug companies should be able to charge whatever they like for literally life saving drugs, then you sir, are a complete and total sack of shit and the reason why we cannot have nice things. So, go fuck yourself.
One of the advantages of a single payer system is bulk discounts. Congratulations to China!