POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: way.out.west on May 04, 2007, 07:49:39 pm
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This is what can happen when an entire nation decides that a drug company is overcharging on the price of its medications. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6626073.stm.
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This is what can happen when an entire nation decides that a drug company is overcharging on the price of its medications. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6626073.stm.
HELL YEAH!!!
Closer to world equality one issue at a time.
Maybe if every contry did this, they'd be more interested in finding a cure rather than making the illness 'manageable'. Since there would not be much of a profit beyond the cure. YAY!
And, if the people of the world demanded equal health coverage?? Oh, wishful thinking... :)
-joseph
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I posted the article here also :
http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=12013.0
Ray
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My partner looked at me blankly until I explained this could be the start of something HUGE. However, small note of caution, the only countries who will do this may be the ones who can afford to fight legal battles and can afford to lose the support programmes the drug companies run...just a thought?
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Brazil turned down all of Bushco's financial aid for AIDS due to the contingency that 1/3rd must be spent on abstinence programs (if I remember correctly...)
GO BRAZIL !!
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Good for President Lula da Silva! It's about time someone stood up to the pharmas!
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Brazil turned down all of Bushco's financial aid for AIDS due to the contingency that 1/3rd must be spent on abstinence programs (if I remember correctly...)
GO BRAZIL !!
So arrogant it is, of our current administration to try and micromanage social issues in other countries when our own country is totally off the hook.
My friend Lindsay (with the cookie recipe) told me that she witnessed security censor two college age men discussing terrorism because it was felt that that the topic was uncomfortable.
I can't wait for Bush to be out of office.
And, fuck you, jack (with love), in advance for anything you're about to say on the issue. :)
-joseph
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Brazil threatened to due this a few years ago with Kaletra I believe, and eventually reached an agreement with the pricing.
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+: Cheaper drugs
- : Now every pharma company woulld be on caution when develop a new safer drug that it could loose her profit. Not good.Because we still need new better drugs ( with less toxicity and more riability .............also a drug that can be dosed once per week maybe ).
Not to mention vacccine research , genetic treatman..............
Do not wanna sound like downbringer but that fact(caution) would first be on their minds I presume........................
Al
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Al,
Absolutely right. I feel for Brazil and the rest of the developing world but the more this goes on the less interested pharma will be in investing in future meds. It is INCREDIBLY expensive to develop new drugs and those costs HAVE to be recouped in the relatively brief period available before the patent expires.
All the currently available drugs came out of investment by big pharma. Remove the incentive and there will no more - no improvement in HAART, no therapeutic vaccines, let alone any kind of cure. Wonder what that might look like? Look to malaria - it kills more than a million people a year yet there's been no advance in treatment for it for decades. Because it disproportionately affects the developing world it isn't seen as profitable enough by pharma to invest in. It is that simple and that cruel.
The better way forward, I think, would be for the developed world to foot more of the bill on behalf of developing countries. Perhaps via the Global Fund and without stupid strings attached requiring them to run abstinence programmes.
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A while ago I viewed a program on television and in the program it stated that a new drug could cost as much as 500 million to develop for the market . Granted that is a lot of money but alot of the money comes from the goverment in the form of research grants. A typical patent runs about 17 yrs and then the drug company can repatent it as a generic for 5 to 7 years I think. Now if for example you have 20 million people taking the same aids drug at say a cost of 1500.00 per month, it doesnt take long to make your 500 million dollars back. I can see both sides of the coin but being a realist, in a capitalist economy it is much more profitable to keep making the money by making pills as treatment versus a cure. The cure will come when enough people are infected and threatens to collapse the world economy and wipe out the human race.
That is of course, if we dont do something stupid and use nukes to do the job first.
I have always believed that if the price was dropped to a reasonable amount after the money was recouped from development it would be a boon to everyone. I mean even at my income level, I could afford to pay 100.00 a month for the thirty pills of Atripla I now take a month.
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I agree with Al about the negative aspects of this - the ripple effects are not going to be as simple Merck and the U.S. surrender to internatonal pressure.
Do I think Brazil has the right to do this? Yes. I do.
Do I think that this may slow some releases of other drugs that are in the pipeline until future international patents can be worked out? Yep.
I'm really not sure I'm in a cheering mood about this.
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A while ago I viewed a program on television and in the program it stated that a new drug could cost as much as 500 million to develop for the market .
Actually you can probably more than double that figure. The average cost of bringing a drug through to regulatory approval was in 2003 about $897 million:
http://csdd.tufts.edu/NewsEvents/RecentNews.asp?newsid=29
To that you can add the R&D costs for countless other developments that never make it through to regulatory approval. For every 10,000 compounds investigated only five make it through to clinical trials. Of those five only one goes on to get regulatory approval. These costs have to be written off and therefore have to be recouped through products actually on the market.
To further complicate the picture only three of every ten prescription drugs generate enough revenue to meet or exceed average R&D costs. Again, those costs have to be recouped through the other three drugs that actually do meet or exceed average R&D costs.
I am not aware that any of the currently available HAART meds came about as a result of research grants from any government - they were all down to this kind of investment by pharma. Most research grants pale in comparison to these kinds of costs anyway.
A lot of money and a lot of risk? You bet.
in a capitalist economy it is much more profitable to keep making the money by making pills as treatment versus a cure. The cure will come when enough people are infected and threatens to collapse the world economy and wipe out the human race.
I know this is a popular 'conspiracy theory'. It just fails to recognise that pharma companies are in competition with each other and many don't have any stake in existing HAART meds. They don't have any HAART revenue to protect if they did find a cure, and if they did, they would stand to make a lot of money. That's why there's already R&D in that area, alongside R&D in improved HAART. It will continue if we give them enough incentive to bother investing the astronomical figures required. A cure will be found if and when it is found.
(and no, I have no shares in pharma)
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A while ago I viewed a program on television and in the program it stated that a new drug could cost as much as 500 million to develop for the market . Granted that is a lot of money but alot of the money comes from the goverment in the form of research grants. A typical patent runs about 17 yrs and then the drug company can repatent it as a generic for 5 to 7 years I think. Now if for example you have 20 million people taking the same aids drug at say a cost of 1500.00 per month, it doesnt take long to make your 500 million dollars back. I can see both sides of the coin but being a realist, in a capitalist economy it is much more profitable to keep making the money by making pills as treatment versus a cure. The cure will come when enough people are infected and threatens to collapse the world economy and wipe out the human race.
That is of course, if we dont do something stupid and use nukes to do the job first.
I have always believed that if the price was dropped to a reasonable amount after the money was recouped from development it would be a boon to everyone. I mean even at my income level, I could afford to pay 100.00 a month for the thirty pills of Atripla I now take a month.
I suspect the number generally thrown out by the pharmaceutical companies is grossly overinflated to justify the high price.
Many independent studies have put the cost of around 50 to 200 million.
Do the pharmaceutical companies have a right to make money? Absolutely.
Does it make sense that some very common drugs cost so much less in other first world countries? Why is it that an analysis of drug cost difference between Canada and the US noted that without fail the drugs were cheaper in Canada and the differences ranged anywhere from 10% cheaper to 455% cheaper.
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I suspect the number generally thrown out by the pharmaceutical companies is grossly overinflated to justify the high price.
Many independent studies have put the cost of around 50 to 200 million.
The figure I quoted above of $897 million wasn't thrown out by pharmaceutical companies - it came from Tuft University - see link above.
Does it make sense that some very common drugs cost so much less in other first world countries? Why is it that an analysis of drug cost difference between Canada and the US noted that without fail the drugs were cheaper in Canada and the differences ranged anywhere from 10% cheaper to 455% cheaper.
I suspect that is because prices in Canada are fixed by government intervention whereas in the US they're not. If pharma could charge the higher price in Canada then I think there's little doubt they would.
Kinda reminds me of another discrepancy. Software manufacturers, in particular Microsoft and Adobe, often charge double the price for their products in the UK compared to when sold in the US. Does it make sense? Not really, particularly not when you consider there's no government intervention involved.
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Reasons why drugs are usually cheaper in Canada then US. (according to a report done by the CBC)
1 - Exchange rate (although in the last years the Canadian dollar has steadily increased, that gap has narrowed significantly)
2 - In Canada drug companies are not allowed to do direct to consumer marketing. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, drug companies spent almost $3 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising – a price that gets passed on to the consumer. (One way I know I'm watching an American channel instead of a Canadian, is the amount of commercials for medication. "Ask your Doctor about _______" )
3 - The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, a quasi-judicial body of the government created in 1987, reviews pharmaceutical prices and enacts caps for patented drugs and medicines prices. (I'm capitalist by nature, but certain things like health, education, defense are a few areas where I agree the government should be involved. Plus the companies still make a profit in Canada as they should, maybe not as much as they would like, but they do.).