Posted on 01/23/2005 4:47:17 AM PST by ResistorSister
It’s called hyperparathyroidism, and many of us dialysis patients eventually must cope with it. It’s important to control it, or painful bone problems will develop.
My doc, after taking all the usual remedial steps, says I need a new drug, the first that alleviates the problem. Fine, write me a script.
“James, you’re not going to want to hear this,” my druggist said.
“It costs $13.35.”
“That’s cheap,” I said.
“Per pill.”
What? That’s $400, per month, for the rest of my life. I could mortgage a house for that, or lease a Cadillac.
I left without them. In the car, it hit me: corporate greed, golden faucets in the drug-company restrooms, executives taking home more in a week than I make in a year.
I had to do something, so I hit the Internet. The greed thing simply did not wash. The company is not exactly rolling in dough. Its stock hasn’t budged for three years. It doesn’t pay a dividend. You could make more money on a bank savings account.
So how did we get to $13.35? More Internet research. I deep scanned the company’s SEC statements and financials.
It’s a new drug with limited potential users. Company officials had to pay for many years of research, liability insurance and field trials and then FDA approval, with zero cash coming in. They have only a few years to sell it at full price before it goes generic.
Now they must sell the pills to countries with socialized medicine where costs are controlled by laws instead of the free market. That’s where the big rub takes place for us.
Americans are picking up the worldwide costs of medications, their development, testing, manufacture and some profit to keep the company in business and employees working. Other countries are not paying their fair share, nowhere close.
It’s insane, but it’s happening with all drugs. Americans are subsidizing the world’s medicine cabinets, rich countries including Canada. Then Canada resells them to us. Neat trick.
What to do? Write your congressman? Let’s pass a law like the others have, cutting prescription prices to affordable prices? Twenty-five cents a pill sounds good.
So Congress does that, and there goes this company and the industry.
(I did check on getting the pills in Canada. That country’s government is close to shutting off the pipeline to the States. They don’t want to knock out the American drug industry. They want to keep their own good deal, and keep us paying for it here).
If the world were a logical place, perhaps these countries would be picking up their fair share of drug prices. Like fun. Governments control prices, not the market. No politician over there ever would increase drug prices just to help us. They prefer to squeeze the fat cats — us. What a surprise.
My case has a silver lining. I have prescription insurance. We called them, and after the sticker shock subsided, they agreed to cover all but $30 a month to keep me walking, mowing the grass and hopefully free from a future of terrible bone pain.
What about the folks not on Medicaid and without insurance? What a scary thought. The $400 would be more than crippling. That’s crippling on their family budgets and crippling on their bodies, too. It’s enough to make even healthy people very sick. My druggist says it’s happening all the time. So far, nobody has a solution, just rhetoric, and we all know what that’s worth.
You can reach Repository New Media Editor Jim Hillibish at (330) 580-8324 or e-mail:
I'd be curious to know what drug companies liabilities are in Canada. Do they have the same exposure there as they have here with respect to greedy tort lawyers looking to cash in on claims of people being 'damaged' by prescription drugs? I'd guess they don't because you can still buy cyclamates and saccharin in Canada, and those haven't been legal in the US for years.
I'm thinking that goes a LONG way toward explaining why they can sell the drugs so much cheaper in Canada. They don't have to worry about being sued, so they don't have to buy 'extortion insurance', which is what helps drive the cost of pharmaceuticals up in this country.
So they can't fleece pharmaceutical companies like they can here in the States? This is one of the major costs of drug production, the need to collect enough money to pay for the vultures who may come after the companies based on a jury's interpretation of a plaintiff's maladies.
Even drugs that have passed FDA tests have been pulled from the market because some person percieved it to be the cause of a problem and sued the company. The anti nausea drug, Bendectin, was taken off the market in the early 80's because some lawyers convinced some juries that it was the cause of birth defects. As far as I know, there was no study that supported this claim, only the emotions of the juries feeling sorry for women with babies that were born with deformities, some of which would occur naturally in a given number of births. Taking this drug off the market doomed thousands of pregnant women to weeks of nausea and vomiting, putting their health at serious risk.
If you are selling me a car an I low bid you, you can always refuse to sell it to me.
If drug companies are unhappy selling drugs in Canada cheaper than in the US they can refuse to do so. Several companies have refused to sell drugs in Canada for the government mandated price.
If the Canadian government did that they would be violating the Treaty of Rome. The Treaty of Rome, which Canada signed, provides protection for intellectural property and mandates stiff panalties for patent infringment.
Also the Canadian government does not manufacture drugs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.