So there's a drug to cure Hep C, but it costs $84,000...

[alphacat]

...Well, to be correct: it doesn't HAVE to cost that much, but fuck it - people will pay, right?

Ah yes. The glorious market. Let it be free! Let it rule us all!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/12 ... rug-prices

[m8son666]

I don't really want to get into a huge debate about this but take away the profit the pharmaceutical industry makes and watch how new drugs stop being researched.

also this:

I am on my 2nd week of Sovaldi. I am not very rich or even kinda rich, my wife has great insurance (Aetna) that agreed to pay for the treatment. Sovaldi 400 mg for 12 weeks cost $90k. My cost is $5.00. On top of that, I have ribavarin and interferon, which ups the cost to about $120k.

I took the Incivic/interferon/ribavarin therapy last year and relapsed after 20 weeks. Without Sovaldi, my next stop is the transplant table. Take a wild guess how much a transplant and follow up meds would cost?

Obviously, having been infected in basic training in 1974 and diagnosed in 1979, and with insurance covering this, plus I am automatically tracked for any 'long term' side effects, I'll take it.

Besides, what other disease can be cured by Big Pharma, as opposed to mere symptomatic amelioration?

Perspective: I've got some.
The Alternative: consider it

[titchbit]

Yeah but that's like a 10,000% profit.... I think they could survive on 100% or even 15% like most industries in the world.

Not a rhetorical question (i don't actually know the answer) - do pharmaceutical companies in countries that have regulations on drug prices still innovate new drugs? Where are most drugs discovered?

[m8son666]

Probably, but without huge profit margins there will be less incentive to research new drugs and so pharmaceutical companies will move to other things and no new drugs will be researched. However wrong people may find this it is the truth.

No idea about either of your questions sorry, although one of my lecturers did talk about a few companies that are slowly moving to other things as they can't make enough money from researching drugs I cant remember which though.

[titchbit]

i'm just saying that drug development and drug distribution don't happen in the same country. i doubt these ridiculous prices exist in most all of europe, but they still make drugs.

could also be publicly funded. i mean the people that are developing these drugs are not the ones collecting these fat checks. so it's not like chemists are gonna stop working. businessmen and ceo's are collecting 98% of that profit.

[m8son666]

I don't really know how it all works but i sure as hell know that pharmaceutical companies aren't giving the drugs away for free in Europe they will be getting paid somehow.

Yeah i suppose it could be publicly funded but considering it costs ~$5 billion to make a new medicine i don't think that would be very successful. Haa of course the chemists will stop working when they don't have a lab, up-to-date lab equipment, animals to test on, a salary, a way to compensate for the hundreds of failed attempts and funding for the hundreds of other things needed.

[nowaysj]

Universities + people with a natural inclination to heal the sick = problem mostly solved.

[m8son666]

Also i don't understand why people, mainly Americans, complain so much about the pharmaceutical industry and not about surgery and other procedures. As that guy's comment that i posted above says, surgery to cure his hepatitis would be a lot more than this drug, whereas a lot less time and money goes into the surgery. Why is it ok to charge so much for one life saving action but not for another? I am sure there is someone becoming equally rich off the amount Americans are charged for medical procedures.

[m8son666]

Universities + people with a natural inclination to heal the sick = problem mostly solved.

lol, good luck to Universities having ~$5billion to develop a drug, also good luck to these people with a 'natural inclination to heal the sick' doing so with no funding.

[nowaysj]

Much of the research is already done in universities, and there is plenty of funding for participants, and it wouldn't cost universities 5 billion because they don't have the kind of overhead pharma corps do - Don't have to produce profits exceeding quarterly projections for institutional investors, no marketing, no execs, no bribery. When the profit motive is removed and science is allowed to proceed, potential liabilities would drop considerably.

[titchbit]

i didn't read the whole article, but for these purposes, this individual case doesn't really matter. much of the time, a single pill costs over $50,000. we're not talking about all the pills they'll have to take for the rest of their life. it could be millions of dollars that someone has to pay.

but you're definitely right, all parts of healthcare are way overpriced in america. i guess maybe people just think "oh it's just a little pill it probably costs $2 to make" and they don't take research and developmental costs into account. whereas when it comes to surgeries, the doctors life is kinda sorta also 'on the line' because malpractice is such a big problem in this country also and can ruin a dr's life, which also drives costs up. malpractice reform is one area where i actually think republicans are right about something. they traditionally are pro-reform.

but like i heard somewhere, probably on bill maher, that a typical hip replacement costs like $50 to manufacture, and is then sold to the hospital for $10,000, who then sells it to the patient for $35,000. people are definitely starting to wake up to the fact that it isn't just the pharma industry that is doing this, the hospitals are just as bad, charging $100 for a niacin pill and shit...

[nowaysj]

$12k bill for a ~ 3 hour er visit.

[m8son666]

Much of the research is already done in universities, and there is plenty of funding for participants, and it wouldn't cost universities 5 billion because they don't have the kind of overhead pharma corps do - Don't have to produce profits exceeding quarterly projections for institutional investors, no marketing, no execs, no bribery. When the profit motive is removed and science is allowed to proceed, potential liabilities would drop considerably.

How come pharmaceutical companies still exist if this is the case?

[titchbit]

i didn't know pharmaceutical companies even discovered drugs. i thought they just manufactured them. which lets be honest does not cost $84k per pill. i thought it was mainly academic ppl or independent r&d companies

[nowaysj]

We are in a transitional period. In the past, pharma's high profit margins allowed favorable distortion of the market and regulatory schemes.

[jrkhnds]

somebody please explain to me why some people still think compulsory health insurance is a bad thing. because quite frankly, I don't see the issue.

[titchbit]

IT'S TAKING AWAY YER FREEDOM!!!

[test_recordings]

Pharmaceutical companies actually put fuck all money in to R&D anymore. Their marketing budget, on the other hand, is several sizes bigger.

I think the guy who invented the polio vaccine deliberately didn't patent it to keep the cost low. I'm all up for public funding university departments to do similar things.

My ex was a research chemist for a Japanese company and the pharmaceutical industry here is absolutely huge. A lot of my students do clinical research as well. They're all trying to look for 'blockbuster' drugs because it's like finding oil but with less work after doing so...

[wub]

They also have a drug that cures HIV if administered within the first 24hrs. All hospitals keep a stock of it specifically to treat medical staff who are infected with HIV blood during operations etc.

Due to its high cost, it is not generally prescribed to the public, even in extreme circumstances like rape cases.

[garethom]

As with everything that's covered by insurance, it's more expensive than it should be.

Recent example. Somebody bumped into my girlfriend's car, and she had to get a whole panel repainted. She was shopping around because she didn't want to pay for it on her insurance. She ended up paying about £200 for it, but one place was asking for over a grand. Turned out it was the place that Aviva send their customers.

Same way vets bills are so high for simple things. Majority of people are insured, so people will rip the insurer off. It's just those without it that get fucked over.

I did see a program before about the cost of pharmaceuticals, that a lot of time, due to the r&d for a new drug, the company doing it don't make a lot of profit compared to the money pumped in.