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| Total failure of the free market. | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 25 2015, 11:07 PM (124 Views) | |
| Jonksy | Sep 25 2015, 11:07 PM Post #1 |
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Senior Member
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When a small drugs company owned by a former hedge fund manager bought the rights to a drug used by a few people with compromised immune systems, it probably didn't know it was about to start a global debate on drugs pricing. But after Turing acquired Daraprim, the only drug sold in the US to treat toxoplasmosis, and hiked the price from $13.50 to $750 a treatment, that is just what happened. Now a presidential frontrunner has pledged to take action and biotechnology stocks are in retreat. What happened? Turing Pharmaceuticals, run by Martin Shkreli, bought Daraprim from British giant Glaxosmithkline in August – and promptly hiked the price by 5,000 per cent. After a public outcry it has said it will make the drug available free to vulnerable poorer patients and cut the general price, says The Independent, although it has not yet disclosed the new cost. A failure of the free market? It's more complicated than that. In some respects this is a failure of a market that is not free enough: The Economist notes Daraprim is no longer patent protected and that the increase should be "an open invitation for a competitor to come in and offer something similar for less money". But while in theory anyone can offer the drug under its generic name pyrimethamine, the market for a niche medicine offered to those with weak immune systems such as those with HIV to treat a relatively rare condition is "so small that, even at its new price, it may not be worthwhile for another drugmaker to set up facilities… and obtain the necessary approvals to sell it". So Turing is not ripping off patients? It's not black and white, but even some pro-market commentators think it went too far. In its leader column, the Financial Times says the Daraprim case is an example of "indefensible financialisation of what ought to be a public good". It says Shkreli "has made a financial bet" and is hoping the "relatively small market for Daraprim, and the lack of alternatives" will allow him to "extract unjustified monopoly rents". This is not the first such case of companies "buying up old, neglected medicines, often for rare diseases, and jacking up their prices". The Economist cites estimates that drug prices in the US have risen 127 per cent since 2008, compared with an overall 11 per cent rise in consumer prices. What can be done? One option is direct price controls, of course, and there are many who would support such stringent action. A more moderate course of intervention was set out by Hilary Clinton, Democratic presidential frontrunner, who suggested that the government's public health insurance company should be allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies. This is what the NHS does in the UK and, while drugs prices are still rising they are not doing so to the same degree. Daraprim, for example, is still sold by GSK here for around £13 for a course of 30 tablets. But the move would not be popular with drug companies or their financial backers: Clinton's proposal sent biotech stocks tumbling. Others argue the problem is not too little regulation but too much. Paul Howard, a senior fellow and director of health policy at the Manhattan Institute, writes in the New York Times that price controls only "dampen innovation" and "hurt the sickest patients" – and that instead the drug control processes should be liberalised to get drugs out quicker and more cheaply. |
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| Affa | Sep 25 2015, 11:21 PM Post #2 |
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Nationalise the lot. |
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| Rich | Sep 26 2015, 01:32 AM Post #3 |
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I am afraid it is far more complex than that, it is well known that GP's could prescribe certain drugs for their patients but they are more likely to prescribe those that will bring them in a commision especially where senior citizens are concerned as the state pays for them and the pharmacist, (rubbing his hands with glee) is more than likely to be in cahoots with the GP and is probably the person in the middle who promotes such dealings. Just because the medical profession is recognised as being neutral to the wants of drugs providers does not mean that shady practises do not happen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34326934 |
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| Affa | Sep 26 2015, 01:36 AM Post #4 |
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Those are problems regarding accountability .. a different issue entirely. I wasn't too serious mentioning Nationalisation ..... but there could be huge savings in NHS spend if it were not being ripped-off by every supplier. |
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| Rich | Sep 26 2015, 01:44 AM Post #5 |
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So, do you agree with my comments or what, if not why, if yes what should be done as the Dept of health has openly said that they do not recognise these figures but are instead concentrating their efforts on fraud that may or may not happen in the future.............how the fxxk has it come to this when a certain level of fraud has become acceptable? if the BBC can find this out, would it not be pertinent for the Dept of health to at least say, can you provide us with hard facts and figures so that we can look into this.? |
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| RJD | Sep 26 2015, 07:50 AM Post #6 |
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Prudence and Thrift
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Nationalise pharmaceuticals companies and you can say goodbye to the strong market position the UK holds in this sector. The cost of research is high, the risk of failure is high, the standards of proof that the products are safe to release on Joe Public are quite rightly stringent, who in their right mind would let short termist Politicians anywhere near the control and decision making for this sector? The fact that the NHS do not use their purchasing might as effectively as they could is no justification for nationalising one of the better performing sectors of our economy. I not that the article, a copy and paste with no comments, refers to $750 per treatment. What is a treatment? If that is 14 days with 20 tablets per day then the price per tablet is $2.60 each. I am on a drug which is paid for by insurance and their cost of purchase is £2.20 per pill. On the open market if I try and buy the same I would have to cough up >£10.00 per pill. The other point is that we do not know whether or not selling the drug at $13.50 per treatment covered manufacturing costs. Prices for such companies are not uniform throughout the World, in some cases they have agreed to provide poorer countries with low prices with the expectation that higher prices will be obtained elsewhere. That said a price hike from $13.50 to $750 per treatment is extraordinary and smells of a past cockup. |
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| johnofgwent | Sep 26 2015, 08:12 AM Post #7 |
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It .. It is GREEN !!
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Well speaking as one who had intended to embark on a career in the development side of the industry ... First of all, doctors and pharmacists play no part at all in the prescribing process. Sorry to burst your bubble Rich, but the days when general practicioners in NHS practice (as opposed to private practice) had any say whatsoever in the exact drug being given to a patient ended in the 1970's when General Practicioners first came up against FPC rulings that they prescribe generically (e.g. specify ampicillin as opposed to the brand name) because pharma companies were making many, many millions out of the sale of branded products which, if prescribed for by name, the pharmacy had no option but to supply as the branded product. The backwash from that denial of branded products to GP's included a good many problems not least in my own father in law whose immune system reacted quite violently to a change in asthma medication cuased by a wholly unsuitable and far from inert "packing" material in the generic tablets, for which the ONLY solution was his effective withdrawal from the NHS as far as prescribing was concerned, and payment for the branded materials at their full price under private prescribing arrangements to which his GP fortunately gave his agreement without additional cost. These days the issue is even further removed from the general practicioner, we have bean counters in suits dictating what shall, and what shall not, be prescribed to the sick. And seeing as when I left the industry upon maggie's shutting down of the money that funded me I was quite definitely the magician's apprentice in a rather select group of less than two dozen souls in the UK who between us knew all there was to know at the time about membrane receptors and the uptake and transport of pharmaceuticals administered, I feel justified in making the allegation that the bean counters that make those decisions today know next to fuck all about the business outside of the politics that drives it .... As to the fraud "reported" on that BBC web page, well who would have guessed there are a couple of crooks in the business. Well NO SHIT sherlock ... I think you will have little trouble in finding that level of fraud in VAT carousels filled with mobile phones, dodgy builders, dodgy plumbers, and politicians offering their services as "lobbyists". The issue there is hardly germane to the issue at hand. And having been funded in my research by some of those oh so terrible big pharma companies and seeing my nephew being funded today by the very company to whom I signed over such profits as might have come (and did) from the work I did for them, you can understand that MY take on the business of drug pricing is not going to be aligned to the cardigan wearing tree huggers. Of course it is entirely within the remit of government to strike down this chap's actions at a stroke. All they have to do is declare the Intellectual Property Rights legislation invalid. Of course within ten minutes we will be flooded by chinese fakes of the real thing, just like the counterfeit batteries now flooding ebay And anyway, isn't this drug curing a "lifestyle" disease ? In a world where the smoker is a pariah worse than a nazi despite the fact that his tax funds half the NHS, and political anorexics threaten to cut off treatment of anyone more than a few stone beyond their own biafran physiques, you cannot seriously expect me to weep for those whose lifestyles brought upon them the diseases they now suffer .... Edited by johnofgwent, Sep 26 2015, 08:12 AM.
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| Affa | Sep 26 2015, 09:49 AM Post #8 |
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I completely agree ..... but only because allowing politicians to run the show doesn't remove the corruption. You are aware that I have zero confidence in any Tory administration ever managing a Nationalised industry either efficiently or fit-for-purpose? |
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| papasmurf | Sep 26 2015, 10:01 AM Post #9 |
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Quite, starve it of funds and then privatise it as the Tories are intent on doing with the NHS. Edited by papasmurf, Sep 26 2015, 10:02 AM.
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| disgruntled porker | Sep 26 2015, 11:25 AM Post #10 |
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Older than most people think I am.
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Not to mention the mining industry. |
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