Posted on 03/16/2009 4:07:18 PM PDT by Bodhi1
Without the profit on drugs, there is no research and development. There is no innovation. There are no new drugs.
It's happened before, exactly as described above, in America:
After anthrax-laced letters killed five Americans in the wake of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson threatened to suspend Bayer's patent on its antibiotic Cipro unless the company agreed to his "preferred" price. Bayer, faced with the prospect of generic companies getting the right to break its U.S. patent, caved and slashed its price from $1.83 to less than $1 per pill.
In 2004, Congress passed legislation, called Project BioShield, designed to spur private sector development of treatments for potential bioterrorist attacks. But nearly three years after the bill was signed, pharma companies have expressed little interest in the program. Not a single new product has been approved by the FDA.
Why? One major reason is the suspicion that, in the event of an attack, the government will offer pennies on the dollar for bio- terror drugs and will break patents to ramp up generic production. Instead of joining the biodefense effort, big companies are thus focusing their efforts on diseases like cancer or heart disease — where financial rewards are left to market forces. (Emphasis mine.)
Because of profits, we have a California biotech company that created a new AIDS drug. Because of profits, Pfizer has created the drug Sutent, which slowed the progression of pancreatic cancer. And because of profits we have new drugs being created and tested every day, including "36 for high blood pressure, 33 for heart failure, 16 for heart attacks, and 22 for stroke."
(Excerpt) Read more at allamericanblogger.com ...
Anybody have any knowledge of Fenoglide (fenofibrate)?
Cholesterol medication.
Uh, wouldn’t it make more sense to sell them cheaply here to begin with?
One drug co altered the strength of one of their drugs by 0.10 mg. That way, they get to re-issue it as a ‘new’ drug; thus, no generic is now available.
Since the original strength is no longer ‘available’, the original generic versions are not either.
How convenient. Now they can charge $40 instead of $4 for a month’s supply.
No! Patent holders are legal monopolists. Monopolists use price discrimination between markets to increase profits. Drug companies sell drugs in poorer countries at lower prices just like any monopolist trying to maximise the amount of consumer surplus extracteed.
No discounts to commie-care nations with socialized medicine. That would bring our prices down and still allow the companies to make a decent profit.
All I want is for them to share the R&D costs equally between nations. As it’s been we’ve been subsidizing people in other countries.
Member of a class of drugs called ‘fibrates’ that lower triglycerides and cholesterol and that can increase HDL (’good cholesterol’) levels. They've been around for awhile. The mechanism of action is thought to be in part via an agonist effect on PPARalpha, a nuclear receptor/transcription factor that controls the expression of genes involved in metabolism.
It costs roughly One BILLION dollars per new drug, whether it gets approved and ever makes a penny or not.
Without Big Pharma in the United States the world would be a much darker place. As usual, we do most of the heavy lifting.
Had a lot of problems with side effects from other cholesterol drugs. really leary of this one, especially when Habib at Walmart Pharm wouldn’t quote me a price without filling the scrip first.
Do you mean price controls? Have you taken a basic course in economics? Do you understand the impact of price controls (a price ceiling in this case)? Price controls here will lead to much less innovation. The only innovation will be government funded research. A federal government agency will determine allowable drugs.
This importation plan will not work. Other countries will not allow export of their cheap drugs. Drug companies will not supply enough drugs for export in large quantities. This bill is only a pretense to impose price controls. When importing fails, the rats will bash big Pharma and impose price controls.
Here’s an “alternative approach” to reducing cholesterol.
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/which-is-better.html
If you’re interested in that sort of thing.
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