F#@K pharmaceutical companies!!!

The EMA is the European Union's version of the FDA. No surprises they are on vacation. Damn lazy Euros with their life extending and productivity enhancing vacations!
oh. i wasn't implying that no other countries have drug oversight agencies. i was pointing out how horribly inefficient and often times unnecessarily slow ours is.
 
I'm sure advertising is part of it, and advertising like we have here is banned in many countries outside of the context of adverts in professional physicians journals. Another significant issue that the other countries set the price they are willing to pay and use their bulk purchasing power to negotiate this to a good price. Other countries also ration expensive drugs based on medical need as a means to control cost. There is also the issue that the US accounts for 56% of all of the world's "new chemical entity" registrations (these are pre-drugs that have not made it into clinical trials), and much of that work happens in the US and the drugs often hit the FDA and market here first, so we get a few years of a new wonder drug delivered at a very high price. I imagine a lot of the negotiated prices other countries pay don't include any compensation for this massive expense. Add to that the liability, legal challenges of patents, filing for approval in multiple countries, and you have a fuck ton of costs that need to be paid. I'm sure there are a ton more reasons that I don't know about at all.

And I am also sure the CEO and executives at the pharma companies have sensible salaries, like a half a million or a million a year.

http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-report/top-20-highest-paid-biopharma-ceos

This is the entire problem of the health care industry being for profit.
 
oh. i wasn't implying that no other countries have drug oversight agencies. i was pointing out how horribly inefficient and often times unnecessarily slow ours is.

I wasn't implying that you were implying...anyway, yes, the FDA is a giant mess, and it seems to be a common scapegoat of why drugs cost a lot. They certainly add a lot to the price of a drug, but it also results in the US having very safe drugs.
 
And I am also sure the CEO and executives at the pharma companies have sensible salaries, like a half a million or a million a year.

http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-report/top-20-highest-paid-biopharma-ceos

This is the entire problem of the health care industry being for profit.

i've been saying the health care INDUSTRY shouldn't be for years. if your house is on fire, and you call the fire department, do they ask for you credit card number before they will come put out the fire?

then why the fuck should you LIFE be someone else's profit?
 
And I am also sure the CEO and executives at the pharma companies have sensible salaries, like a half a million or a million a year.

http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-report/top-20-highest-paid-biopharma-ceos

This is the entire problem of the health care industry being for profit.

I agree with you. CEO salaries in general are stupid, and Pharma is no exception. I also have posted on here many, many times that the concept that a for profit company is in charge of anyone's healthcare is insane.
 
I wasn't implying that you were implying...anyway, yes, the FDA is a giant mess, and it seems to be a common scapegoat of why drugs cost a lot. They certainly add a lot to the price of a drug, but it also results in the US having very safe drugs.

i get that, but also....how many people died waiting for the drugs that could have saved their lives?
 
I'm sure advertising is part of it, and advertising like we have here is banned in many countries outside of the context of adverts in professional physicians journals. Another significant issue that the other countries set the price they are willing to pay and use their bulk purchasing power to negotiate this to a good price. Other countries also ration expensive drugs based on medical need as a means to control cost. There is also the issue that the US accounts for 56% of all of the world's "new chemical entity" registrations (these are pre-drugs that have not made it into clinical trials), and much of that work happens in the US and the drugs often hit the FDA and market here first, so we get a few years of a new wonder drug delivered at a very high price. I imagine a lot of the negotiated prices other countries pay don't include any compensation for this massive expense. Add to that the liability, legal challenges of patents, filing for approval in multiple countries, and you have a fuck ton of costs that need to be paid. I'm sure there are a ton more reasons that I don't know about at all.

SHILL!

16539.jpg
 
Healthcare for profit. Best idea ever. :facepalm:


Sadly, many of the problems are beyond repair by any legislation. Too many in power will never let anything interrupt their profit margins.
 
also, unlike in canada, i would rather not have to be on a waiting list for half a year to get a needed surgery done.

It's not first-come-first-serve, it's triage.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, at 22, I had an MRI in the morning, consulted with a neurologist that afternoon, consulted with a neurosurgeon above 10 days later, was admitted that afternoon, and had my first surgery that Friday. All in all, about 16 days. Since then, I've had more surgeries, and regularly scheduled MRIs every 3 months.

If I was living in the US, I'd literally owe millions.

Canadian health care horror stories are just that; campfire stories intended to scare, not to reflect reality. Not saying it's perfect, but you don't have to weight the pros-and-cons before visiting the Emergency Room or calling 911.
 
One thing we might want to discuss is the fact that a lot, and perhaps all, of pharmaceutical development work in this country comes from industry. There are scant few facilities in the academic/non-profit/government space with the budget to go from idea to clinical trials, and even fewer that could take the risk of doing so. This leaves industry to cover the costs of trials of their drugs, and a very short patent window in which to recover these costs plus the costs of all the drugs that fail (and maybe 1 out of 100 makes it all the way to your corner CVS). The NIH has done a little work with the MLPCN program, but it is tiny compared to industry. So, where should the money to develop new drugs come from? Should this be strictly profit based? Should it be handed over to politicians to decide what drugs will be developed?

I toss these out as points of discussion. They have very little to do with the Mylan pricing issue. They do, however, highlight the fact that developing drugs costs a lot of money, and someone has to pay for it. I don't think there are easy answers here, but it is something we should consider when we compare health costs, medication costs, and the like.

Whenever someone brings up the "high cost of developing drugs" (which is really just code for "high executive salaries"), I counter with- "well, why should the US shoulder the drug development costs for the entire world?" If every other developed nation on earth can tell the pharma industry "no, we won't pay usurious prices to give your c-suite outrageous bonuses, thanks" then why can't we?

More food for thought: 20-some years ago, pharma giant Glaxo bought pharma not-quite-as-giant Smith-Kline Beecham. SKB's research policy had been to allow teams to pursue studies of scientific merit for a certain amount of time, regardless if there was a potential profit in it or not, just in the interest of science (and because you never know where research is going to lead). Glaxo stopped that immediately. Today, GSK (as they are now known) has dispensed with its research department entirely and will be buying their data from independent research facilities. So clearly, the emphasis in medical research is now heavily weighed towards drugs that will be most profitable, regardless of their humanitarian value. In other words, boner pills trump obscure epilepsy drugs.
 
(from www.benefitscanada.com)

Our healthcare system is costly – Canada has one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world. We can look to many other countries to see superior health for less money. Our single-payer model works in theory, but, in practical terms, it has not delivered the results that one would have necessarily expected with respect to value for money.

Healthcare decision-making is political – Healthcare decisions are often made based on “political palatability” or what’s acceptable to the voting public versus what makes sense from a financial sustainability perspective or in terms of health outcomes. The decision-making process is complicated and often slow, and results in small incremental change rather than fundamental change. We are likely at a point in time where we need to ask the tough questions—but the politics of decision-making will get in the way and we may not get to where we need to be.

Access to care is a significant problem – Restrictions on government funding has limited access to care—wait-lists are routine, and Canadians are increasingly having difficulties accessing the services of family physicians. The system has not kept up with the demands and expectations of the patient.

The healthcare system is not very nimble – Our healthcare system is huge and, therefore, not very nimble. Although many provinces are trying to change this, our system remains focused on acute and chronic care—addressing the problem once it becomes a problem. Most experts agree that the focus should shift to prevention and health promotion. This is a monumental shift that is going to take time. The system has also not kept up with the changing face of illness and treatment. For example, physical health remains the primary focus of the system while mental illness represents a significant cost to the Canadian economy and society. Drug therapy is used extensively in the treatment of injury and disease, yet these costs fall largely outside of the public system.

Not all Canadians are treated the same – We have a universal healthcare system and yet—in some respects—this is also a misrepresentation. Healthcare funding across the country is far from consistent with access to care defined, in part, by your province of residence. And this gap will only get larger as resource-rich provinces such are Alberta and Saskatchewan are able to invest more on a per capita basis than the other provinces. Health transfer payments are supposed to compensate for these funding imbalances; however, the fact of the matter remains—our healthcare system is far from universal.

These "problems" are a huge step forward from the American system. Of course Canada's isn't perfect, but I'd take it in a heartbeat over the mercenary system of profiteering we have in the US. And, the Canadians are still trying to improve theirs. The republican party down here keeps trying to make ours worse.

Then take a look at the French or Norwegian systems to see the idea implemented even better. Do you really think the United States isn't as capable as France to create a great healthcare system?
 
It's not first-come-first-serve, it's triage.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, at 22, I had an MRI in the morning, consulted with a neurologist that afternoon, consulted with a neurosurgeon above 10 days later, was admitted that afternoon, and had my first surgery that Friday. All in all, about 16 days. Since then, I've had more surgeries, and regularly scheduled MRIs every 3 months.

If I was living in the US, I'd literally owe millions.

1. I had a friend in Sweden with a similar story- major accident, long recovery with lots of PT, cost her basically nothing out of pocket. The idea that you could lose your house to medical bills because you got sick seems like a twisted joke to Europeans- they don't understand how it would even be possible in a country as rich as ours.

2. Stay strong, brother

Not saying it's perfect, but you don't have to weight the pros-and-cons before visiting the Emergency Room or calling 911.

Or even if you can afford a checkup.
 
what is wrong with you? don't you realize that the USA is the capitol of unregulated, unencumbered P R O F I T??
what rock have you been living under for the last 100 years?
(sarcasm)
Back when I was an econ major in the 80's, I at one point believed the free market would generally work. I have questions about that now in many markets due to multinational corps and globalization. I was a little bit of an Alex P. Keaton back then. But even then, I was aware of exceptions such as anything that had to do with pollution and external costs, and certain markets where the free market did not work due to problems with choice, free flow of information, bargaining power, etc. And, even then, it appeared there were problems with health care. Obviously now, the problems are worse. The libertarians who say "well, it is not truly a free market so it is not working right" are high. There will not be a free market in this area. No system is perfect, but trying to inject profit motive into our healthcare system is not working. Single payer of some sort is the way to go, even if that system has some problems as well.

EDIT: then we can get to discussing solutions for the next tier of problems, as others have said.
 
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