Posted on 03/30/2013 6:17:13 AM PDT by memyselfandi59
Title speaks for itself. This is a pill, you take 2 each day, 60 pills per month, 55K per year, i.e. about $75 per pill (and we wonder why insurance is going up.) It's ridiculous.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Americans have to pay that much so that the manufacturer can afford to sell it to all the socialist health care systems for $500 a year.
How much do you charge for the MS medication that you have developed?
If ‘they’ keep it up they may see a preview of their hell on earth. They’ve already done as much damage as they can do to create a hell here for the rest of us.
Most of us understand that the communists, baby killers, complicit media nutcases, homosexual agenda sycophants and other assorted America-hating organizations are compacted into one convenient party: DEMOCRAT. Makes it a much easier target
According to the article the drug is only effective 50 % of the time in either slowing the disease or reducing occurances of symptoms
Pretty steep price or a 50 / 50 shot...
The drug company does have programs to help pay what insurance will not...so I assume they understand the price is above what the market will bear...
I see this, and I see 20+ years of people in clean suits, booties and masks, huge banks of machinery, cages of rats, and armies of people who run research protocols to comply with the FDA regulations.
I see people who fully expect after all this, when something works, for the government to walk in, stick a gun in the ribs of the drug manufacturer, and say “For the good of the people, you have to sell this for $XX
I see politicians on podiums talking about how they are for the “little people” and “those who have no voice, like the sick and infirm” and how they are fighting the evil drug companies.
And I see an MS patient at the end of life, who might have had some “pill” 15 years ago that might have slowed the progression of their MS or improved the quality of their life in some way, who is never going to make that boat when it leaves the dock.
A 50% improvement is pretty good for a new drug.
I wonder how quantifiable the results are?
That said, many pharma and biotech companies are now targeting ‘orphan diseases’ because there is generally less competition in these areas, and a ‘hit’ generally ensures a big profit from a captive market. I have a problem with balancing all of the difficult financial issues faced by pharma on the backs of those unfortunate enough to have an uncommon and horribly debilitating disease.
Not ridiculous. Blame the FDA for requiring Biogen to perform clinical studies over 5-10 years and costing upwards of $1 billion. If a company cannot recoup its expenses then no company will develop new treatments for severely debilitating diseases like MS. Further, 13-20 years from now that drug will go generic and be far more affordable, part of the effective treatment armamentarium for MS for the next generation. Drug companies, while not perfect, overwhelmingly do good for the world.
They didn’t really develop this med, it’s been in use in Germany for years, but to treat psoriasis. They did testing and trials on it, to see if it would help MS, probably some tweaking to patent it. It was originally used to treat sofas, but was pulled from the market because it gave people rashes.
I’ve used an interferon (Betaseron) for years, it costs around $3000 per month, when I started it 8 years ago, it cost $1700...but the cost has risen every year.
So from what I’m reading the efficacy of the interferons is 30% reduction in relapses, versus 44% with this pill. Doesn’t cure anything, and you have to stay on these treatments your whole life (supposedly) or until you progress enough to where they’re not effective anymore.
Side effects from the interferon are achey flu like feeling the day after the shot, but you take the shots every other day, some varieties of interferon, once a week. But this pill you take twice a day, and the side effect is nausea and diarrhea.
My neuro wants me to try this, but I’ll waiat awhile. The last two drugs introduced Tysabri, and Gilenya, were found to have fatal side effects, but it didn’t come to light until the drugs were in use by the MS population, in general.
The “list price” of any drug is never the price actually paid. All companies “contract” with insurance plans to guarantee coverage or better tiering of that drug. In the end, the price paid is discounted, via a variety of mechanisms, from the list price. These figures are never made public to avoid bidding wars between competing drugs.
It’s a race to pay for years of R&D before the patent expires and it can be copied. And to fix this, you propose....what??
Unfortunately, all these meds are only allowed in RRMS (the early stage of the disease.) Once you cross over the SPMS (secondary progressive) or are PPMS from the start (primary progressive) there are no meds for you. These meds don’t cure MS.
The PDF that doctor’s get with prescribing info on this drug says it does not decrease disability compared to those who took a placebo...yet the articles are saying it does.
http://www.tecfidera.com/pdfs/full-prescribing-information.pdf
The truth is there is no effective medication or cure, these drugs are only meant to reduce the number of exacerbations (which average for an MS patient is 3 or 4 a year if they have the relapsing remitting form of the disease.)
I wish you the best in treatment, and I pray for a cure. God Bless you.
And there is nobody (or extremely few) saying there should be no regulation of some kind.
What you see now, though, with the huge armies of people in drug companies, hospitals and THE GOVERNMENT who manage compliance with these regulations, perform inspections, spend extra money avoiding getting “dinged” in an investigation and so on, this is big, Big, BIG money. How many people work for the FDA alone, and I’ll bet their salaries would make your eyes pop.
And hospitals and drug companies have to have quality people running things on their end to ensure compliance is as airtight as possible, and that is complicated work that has to be done by experienced people, physicians in many cases who have left practice and earn their living working in compliance types of jobs.
It is an astounding whirlpool of dollars floating in there.
If you think this is “ridiculous,” then I have a question for you:
How much do you charge for the MS medication that you have developed?
And in 20 years, the patent will be expired, and it will be almost free for anyone on the planet to enjoy the benefits of the massive investment that led to the miracle of this drug.
I propose not taking advantage of an orphan disease, by touting a drug that does, at the most, help them ward off a relapse 44% of the time. It’s not about cost of R&D, or even cost of the med, in and of itself. It’s the one upmanship that 3 or 4 pharmaceutical companies play by tweaking already existing meds and touting them as the latest and greatest when, in reality, what they do is minimal, at best, for many MS sufferers.
As to patents, these drugs are not treated the same as most other drugs. Their patents are much longer...here’s a link to an MS blogger who explains how it is these drugs can be around so long without a generic being introduced.
And before this there was no pill and people suffered. New innovations are expensive. In 10 years it will be cheap. That’s the way the market works. If you force the company to sell the pills for a dollar each, no one will develop the pill.
$75 per pill is a bargain. If I had MS, I would pay the price in a second.
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