You can sign me onto that petition: abolish the FDA.
Sorta like the bad guys in Mission Impossible 2
I think you are half right. Frankly I would rather deal with snake oil salesmen than with government parasites. Repeal and don’t replace is my opinion.
I work in the pharma industry and am often irritated by uneducated people who do not understand the drug development process and how expensive it is.
This however is not one of those cases. This is pure Big Government bureaucratic lunacy.
Plus, natural progesterone cream can be bought over the counter at any health food store.
The FDA and our Gov’t are going to drive Americans (those that can afford it) overseas for treatment.
More proof that the very phrase “intellectual property” is a lie: patents and copyrights are government-granted monopolies, pure and simple. The “orphan drug” provision is a particularly obnoxious example of this, as it flies in the face of traditional patent law, in which a patent cannot be granted on something which is “existing art”: scaling up to industrial production something that was being made at pharmacies nationwide might be patentable if the process of mass production were new, but then only using that process would be infringement.
This is also an example of the distinction between pro-business and pro-market that Luigi Zingales makes (cf. Gov. Palin’s recent book, which quotes his ideas approvingly): a state-granted monopoly is anti-market but pro-business. And note the effect: a drastic price-rise in a medical treatment. It makes on wonder to what degree health care costs are driven by anti-market measures like the “orphan drug” provision, allowing patents on “new” drugs which scarcely change the molecular structure of an existing drug for treating the same ailment, or, for that matter, laws that encourage the structuring of health insurance so no price information is transmitted to the consumer of health care.
Follow the money. Who’s who in KV Pharmaceutical stock ownership? hmmm
This smells so bad. There looks to be a big story here and a need to follow the money. If a compounding pharmacy can make it for $10 and KV charges $1500 then there is a lot of cash available to bribe decision makers.
The Fugitive II anybody?
The requirement by the FDA of drugs which have been used for a long time to be officially tested causes problems like this. One example was terpin hydrate. It was a spectacular drug for clearing out my lungs from a really bad cold or bronchitis. I remember getting it in the 1980s when I worked at a drug store and the pharmacist told me “here’s what you want”. But some idiot in the FDA in the 1990s decided it had never been proven to be effective so it was taken off the market. No pharma company wants to put in the money to do full testing because it is out of patent and was only $2-$3 per bottle (cheaper than Robitussin). If they did test it the price would probably jump to $100 per bottle.
Colchicine had a similar situation develop last year, but iirc the cost increase was only around 1000% or so.
Question 1) How did KV Pharmaceutical get exclusive manufacturing rights? The answer to this will certainly lead to criminal investigation.
Question 2) How does a company get “drug trial tax breaks” for an old drug like this?
Question 3) Why are there patents and copywrites that have time periods of 10-15 years?
they did the same thing with colchicine, the pill went from 10 cents to over 5 bucks a pill and there are no generics.
The revolving door corruption between the FDA and Pharma is well known. It’s the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about when discussing spiraling medical costs.
Frankly, I ain't buying it. Costs don't increase by 150 times because you're making it in an "FDA" approved facility as opposed to mixing it in a drug store.
I’ll side with KV on this one. It’s not their fault — monopolies allow companies to charge whatever they want.
It’s the FDA which decided to shut down all the cheap competitors, and allow KV to have a monopoly and charge what it wants.
I wouldn’t put it past this administration to do this on purpose, to get conservatives riled up and supporting some sort of price controls, or as some here say, to attack the drug company for “obscene profits” giving government the excuse to start regulating prices.
We can’t be tricked like this. The free market gives us correctly-priced goods by providing a system of easy competition. The government mostly interferes with that system. Sometimes that interference is good and constitutional, like patents, which for a brief time let people who develop new things make all the money they can before turning the product over to competitive forces.
But mostly the government just screws things up, like the FDA — in the guise of protecting us from “bad drugs”, they limit the availability of drugs, limit our choice to take our own risks, and sometimes grant monopoly status to companies when there was ample competition.
Does KV support Pubbie or Demonrat pol’s?
How much do you suppose KV Pharmaceutical, its officers, PAC and employees donated to Democratic politicians. Anyone who voted for Obama has to be out of his mind.
;-)