'Thirty years ago, the retiring head of the Merck pharmaceutical company (Henry Gadsden) told Fortune magazine that he was distressed that the market for his company’s drugs was limited to only sick people. If he could make drugs for healthy people, he would be able to “sell to everyone”. That dream is now coming true.'-Excerpt from Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients-by Ray Moynihan and Allen Cassels
Drugs are no longer developed according to public health need but according to profitability. A chilling fact, considering we are facing a re-emergence of a number of diseases, once thought to have been completely eradicated. Global health agencies are reporting that within these disease strains, are ones emerging that are completely impervious to existing drug therapies. We as well face the threat from new strains of bacterial infections for which there have been no new antibiotics produced.
We suffer from the mis-conception that the pharmaceutical companies are laboring long and hard, spending millions on research for the development of these much needed antibiotics. When, in fact, more time and money is spent on developing, and marketing, some copycat drug, that is generating enormous profits for the drug's premier distributor. Anti-depressants, libido enhancing drugs, cholesterol lowering drugs, sleep-aids, these are the money-makers, these are the ones that are being copied, in an effort to cash-in, financially.
There are more drugs being developed to market to the healthy, than for treating life threatening disease. These are drugs that can be sold for exorbitant amounts of money, to consumers who will use them for extended periods of time. Considering that drugs such as antibiotics are prescribed, taken, and once the illness is defeated, no longer purchased by a consumer, it doesn't take a genius to realize where the real money is to be made.
We are constantly being told by the pharmaceutical companies that the reason consumers must pay such high prices for their prescription drugs, is due to the massive cost of research and development. Yet, in truth, these same companies spend millions on marketing their money-making, big-sellers. Look at the ads you see for Viagra, and its copycats, those tv commercials for the newest sleep aid, Lunesta, the ads now out featuring some celebrity urging you to ask your doctor about a cholesterol lowering drug. Every one of the aforementioned drugs is a powder-puff drug, compared to the type of medication needed to cure, say, a strain of super-resistant tuberculosis, or one of the deadly, new staph infections being reported by physicians and hospitals. The bugs are evolving, while drug company researchers busily work at developing the next pill for healthy people.
---Jeannine Schenewerk
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posted by ChelseaLad
Health Care Costs – Are you incontinent?
Next I will address one of my favorite areas, Drug Costs. This is an easy one.
First, I would eliminate all advertising by Drug Manufacturers. I am sick of seeing the woman in the elevator worried about a urinary problem or the guy with the hot chick (I assume it’s his wife) who is hoping his viagra will kick in at the right moment. Also, when you see those smartly dressed people in the physician’s office it is the Drug Company Rep with a bagful of samples for the doctor. These companies also have all kind of payola for physicians who push their latest designer drug at triple the cost of the current prescription. The patient sees it on TV and asks for it by name. What can the physician do? So these guys would have to go also under the Universal Health Care System.
Then I would curtail the patent period to 5 years or less. This would get the generic equivalent out on the market sooner. Drug companies can be compensated through tax breaks rather than patent rights and the public would get cheaper drugs sooner.
When I saw the latest Medicare Drug benefit offered with no negotiations with Drug companies over price, I shuddered. In my private enterprise role we were able to negotiate price discounts or capitations amounting to almost a 50% reduction over the retail price. The government can do the same. It would be the only American purchaser of the product. They can name the price. A junior purchasing clerk can negotiate that deal.
Formularies are used by Insurance Companies to manage drug prices and utilization. A formulary is merely a list of drugs to treat a given disease or condition that is generally chronic. The physician is encouraged to start the patient off on the lowest cost drug that can manage the disease. Most of the time it is effective. Otherwise he has gradation of more expensive drugs that he can prescribe. You don’t have to kill a fly with a cannon. You don’t have to manage diseases with the latest, expensive drug, when the old tried and true drug will do the job just as well. The new Universal Health Care System needs strict adherence to formularies.
If I were you and I was an advocate of Universal Health Care System, I might look at the pharmaceutical holdings in my portfolio. I recently sold my Pfizer holdings.
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