Do pharmaceutical companies have too much influence?

Only if we don’t ask questions and say why should I take this. My doctors and I have a good deal of give and take. I’m absolutely honest with them and they damn well better do the same for me.

Absolutely. Money talks. The pharmaceutical companies aren’t all bad obviously, we can’t ignore the many life saving drugs we have, but their bottom line is money, and some take the greed to such and extent it is disgusting.

Lobbies for pharma and doctors control our access to information and to some extent the standard of care.

Take for instance the fact that in some states patients can access their lab work directly if the doctor has set it up that way. You don’t have to wait for your doctor to send you your blood test results, or call, you can just log on to Quest labs and get them as soon as they come in. In some states the medical associations have successfully blocked that so you have to wait, or go back to the doctor taking your time and your money.

I think medical insurance also has an incredible amount if power in how patients are cared for. That’s really bad.

Probably.

That’s hard to answer. If a drug company is producing a life saving drug, they are saving lives. I wouldn’t want to shut them down. We are on the verge of cracking the aging problem and close to producing cyborgs. I’m not sure where this science will lead but I’d hate to see it curtailed.

Too much influence is gross understatement. The stranglehold the drug companies have on us is one of the great scandals of our era. It should infuriate anyone paying attention. The rest of the world looks on in amazement as they buy our drugs for half the price or lower than we are gouged for them. Of course all of this has been ensconced in the laws of our country by our thriving Congressional whore house where business is ALWAYS booming.

It’s not whether it should be shut down or not, it’s whether or not they have too much influence

^^^ Influence on what? I read an article that states we spend 10 cents of every health care dollar on prescription drugs. That is the same ratio as it was in 1960, yet our life expectancy has increased by 8 years. Much of that is due to better drugs. Sounds like they’re doing what we want done.

@jaxk Our health care is a fortune compared to other countries. So, your stat says we pay 10% of an unreasonable number, which makes costs even more unreasonable.

You are also saying if you have to pay your life savings to save your life and financially cripple your family you should be grateful you are alive. You, and millions of others, will be in a state of bankruptcy while the pharma industry makes billions (with a b) because they couldn’t just make millions and let those with I’ll health pay a reasonable health cost.

If I were religious I would say it’s a deal with the devil.

No one is asking business to barely get by with a small profit. Just something reasonable.

What if you could increase your revenue 20 times what it is, but half of your customers would starve? Would you go for the 20 times? Or, maybe just go for ten times and make a nice profit for everything you do, and let the people who want to give you business and be your neighbor live.

It’s a matter of life and death, or at minimum quality of life when it comes to pharmaceuticals. I believe there is a moral component.

@JLeslie – I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you portray. Yes Big Pharma has good margins. Nothing like the 10 or 20 times you seem to think they have but good. What you ignore is the regulatory and legal environment they have to operate in. They spend about $4 billion to bring a new drug to market in the US. Compounding the problem are the lawsuits. You must add another $6.6 billion paid out in settlements in 2012 alone. It’s a risky industry and higher risk always brings higher margins. If you want to lower the cost of these life saving drugs, we need to lower the risk of producing them. That moral component works both ways. If those customers I’m trying to save are spending more time with their lawyers than they are with their doctors, my sympathy diminishes.

Big Pharma holds way too much control over the US health care system. This is shown in two ways:

First, while the US Food & Drug Administration is legally responsible for all new drug & new medical device approvals, the staff scientists making those decisions were all hired away from one pharmaceutical manufacturer or another. Plus, the majority of the FDA’s budget is funded through the new drug application fees the manufacturers pay. To me, that sounds like a major, corruption prone conflict of interest, yet Congress turns a blind eye every year.

Second, all of the talk about being “close” to a cure for one chronic disease or another is a well planned smoke screen. Yes, doctors have a wealth of effective treatments & drugs at their disposal, but there is one problem: prescription medications only treat symptoms, not diseases.

Think about it: chemotherapy for cancer is very expensive, i.e., profitable. So why would the pharmaceutical industry develop a cure for cancer when that cure would reduce—or even eliminate—the chemotherapy cash cow? Similar lines of argument can be posed for all of the major chronic diseases.

YES!!! and again I must state THANK GOD, I AM A CANADIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh and @Jaxk ya think the Pharmaceutical companies might cut down on the law suits if they stopped lobbying to have to new drugs pushed to market way to early???
Also what gets me thinking the the drug companies are only out for massive profits, why do they aim the drugs at consumers , and not DOCTORS who have to prescribe them in the first place??

@SQUEEKY2 – the time to market is somewhat subjective. If you’re dying of some disease, my guess is, you’d like to see the cure released sooner. Typically it takes about 9 years to get a new drug through the various stages of testing. That doesn’t seem like it is pushing out drugs as fast as they can. I don’t understand why it is bad to have an informed consumer. I am responsible for my health. If I have some disease that requires treatment, I would like to know what treatments are available for it. If my doctor is not already aware of these treatments, he’s not doing his job.

@Jaxk I am no way trying to be rude or snobby or disrespectful, but would you tell me of a drug ,ANY drug that actually cures you,and not just eases your symptoms?
The pharmaceutical companies don’t want curing drugs, they want drugs that ease your symptoms so they keep making money on you.
BUT PLEASE tell me of a drug that will actually cure you of a terminal disease, ANY drug,and penicillin don’t count so don’t go with that one.
And I mean one without it you would be dead,and having it you will be totally cured.

Actually Chlamydia can be deadly and is curable…..

Yes:

They pay more for lobbyists year after year than any other industry. Obviously they’re getting something in return for their investment.

American taxpayers fund a good chunk of R&D costs, yet Congress agreed not to ask for a volume discount for Medicare prescriptions. However, the V.A., insurance companies, and hospitals get discounts. Want to help keep Medicare solvent? Demand negotiated prices.

American taxpayers pay more for their drugs at retail than residents in other countries.

It used to be that I could go to Canada to get prescriptions filled a lot cheaper. Not any more. Big Pharma said that’s a no-no because the supply chain was unaccountable, so Congress went along with it. Huh? Does that mean it’s OK to sell potentially dangerous medicines to all Canadians, but not visiting Americans? Bullshit.

I went looking for annual R&D expenditures by Big Pharma. What a joke. There’s so much obfuscation, creative accounting, lying, misrepresentation, subsidizing, and back-scratching going on, I doubt anybody could come up with a valid number.

@Jaxk Read this Q about the new hep C drug and then we can talk. It’s just horrible to me. Same with many cancer drugs. If you’re going to due whatcha gonna do? The people with the cure have complete control and power. They hold your life.

I actually agree that not all of pharma is making huge margins, but a lot of it is. I actually I am ok with direct to consumer advertising, a lot of people aren’t. I’m not ok with huge dollars wooing doctors.

@SQUEEKY2 – I’m not sure why you rule out penicillin and all it various dirivatives, other than that it does exactly what you say they don’t do, cure. Nonetheless, here are 8 diseases that now have cures and have been virtually eradicated here in the states.
1. Tetanus
2. Rabies
3. Polio
4. Yellow Fever
5. Rinderpest
6. Whooping Cough
7. Measles
8. Smallpox

I think they fit the spirit of your question.

@JLeslie – I’m not familiar with that drug specifically but I’ll add a few things that don’t seem to be addressed. The cost of development is not the only or even the most expensive part. The phase 1, 2, and 3 trials are lengthy and expensive. The inevitable lawsuits will also wreak havoc with the expense model your link displays. You’ve also got the cost of making the drug which can be significant. Some of the component biological and chemical agents can be quite expensive. The $84,000 is not profit but rather revenue, a significant difference.

There may be a big problem as your link suggests or there may not. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from this kind of superficial analysis.

@JLeslie – While looking for the article on component costs for drugs, I ran across this article talking about the hepatitis C drug called Sovaldi, that your link references. You may find it interesting.

@Jaxk most of the diseases you named the scientists and pharma companies didn’t make wild fortunes when first brought to market, there was more focus on the health of society at large. Smallpox and Rinderpest are the only ones on that list eradicated in the world, and rinderpest only was declared eradicated in the last ten years some time if I remember correctly. Bill Gates is trying to get rid of Polio worldwide through his charitable organization.

I realize you said eradicated in the US and not the world, but even in the states some of those diseases crop up more than people realize, although it is seldom. I’m pretty sure none of them have “cures,” but people can get better, and symptoms can be dealt with. There are treatments, but not really cures. The vaccines you name aren’t really a cure, it’s to prevent the disease.

I would assume getting everyone a vaccine is cheaper for our healthcare system than treating sick people with measles, polio, tetanus etc. even if it isn’t cheaper, it seems like the right thing to do.

Companies have to hold aside money for lawsuits, that’s accounted for before the drug goes to market. The testing is expensive. Sometimes partly funded by the federal
government, depending on the drug. I was talking about profit, not revenue, so expenses are accounted for.

Some drugs there is relatively little expense. They just take an already existing drug and get it approved for a new use and they have a patent, or extend the patent, on an old drug. They work that systems ten ways to heaven believe me.

@JLeslie – The argument that I was responding to was that drug companies don’t want cures because they make more money extending treatments. Vaccines in general counter that argument and create diminishing returns. Your link on Hepatitis C Also counters that argument. Any money set aside for lawsuits is taken out of profits. The link you supplied did not account for that. Nor did it account for any expenses. I will agree that some drugs are repackaged for new uses but even then they go through the testing and approval process which may be cheaper but not cheap. I won’t argue that the gov may support testing at times but don’t have a good feel for how much or how often. I suspect not much. The final piece is the failures. Less than 1 in 10 new drugs actually make it to market. All those drugs that don’t make it still have associated development and testing costs. Those costs must be supported by the drugs that do make it to market.

I’m not trying to defend the drug companies nor the process for creating drugs. I do however, think it is overly simplistic to merely look at the cost and scream that the drug companies are evil. Typically new products are expensive. It is the nature of new things to cost more. Over time the cost comes down and it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about new cars, new computers, or new drugs. They all work the same. If the new product is useful, we all benefit. Things that used to be luxury items are now common place and often even necessities. Cancer use to be a death sentence. Now, depending on what kind, it’s 50–50. Just because some one creates a new drug with promise, you can’t expect to get it to everyone immediately. How long has the polio vaccine been around and the Gates charity is just now trying to get it world wide. If the drug were only 10 cents, there would be some that couldn’t afford it.

@Jaxk I’ve never said pharma companies don’t want cures. I don’t believe they are that sinister. I’ve said the same on other Q’s. I think they love when people are dependent on their drugs, but I don’t think they purposely avoid finding cures.

Drugs at new doses that get patented don’t need to go through all stages of testing. That new acne drug is 40mg of Doxicycline. People have been taking doxi at 100mg for as long as I can remember. How they got a patent on the 40 dose is beyond me. The only testing to be done is efficacy. They didn’t have to start with animal testing to see if people might die from it in big numbers.

Would it be better if there were no pharmaceutical companies? Or if there were, before they undertake a new drug or bring one to market, they take an opinion poll to see how desired the masses really want it or what they truly expect it to do. If the drug doesn’t seem to be desired or the expectations too high, or the risk in taking it vs what it is supposed to treat, the pharmaceutical company can then decide whether to even bother burdening the populace with it.

@Jaxk I forgot to mention that the article you posted says the drug would need to be $50k to break even. It does not say break even when? In the first year? In the first 100,000 patients? I guess that’s the 5 billion quoted in the article doing math in my head. I hope my decimal is in the right place. I’m pretty sure there are a few million people with hep c in just the US, but I don’t remember the numbers. Maybe that was in one of the articles.

@JLeslie – I think most of those numbers were in the question you linked to. Even though the two sources don’t seem to match up exactly. Way too many variables to guess when the break even will occur, if it ever does.

It’s pretty simple to see the breakeven will be quite fast. They only need 100,000 paying patients and they will be well
past breakeven at $84k per treatment. Like I said, more than a million people just in the US are infected.

@JLeslie – If the good Lord’s willing and the Creeks don’t rise. In other words if nothing changes the equation. They wouldn’t be the first to think they had a lock on technology only to have their batteries explode. There is no way to tell how many will get this solution at this price nor whether there will be some side effect that kills or cripples it. I suspect they were not the only ones looking for a cure and are there other solutions on the way.

You can predict a breakeven point by the number of treatments but predicting the time is a bit more difficult.