DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Drug makers quietly raised prices on hundreds of medications – again

Just shut up and bend over.



Yep That's the drug makers moto.

Pretty par for the course.

Part is probably due to increased R&D costs of that drug or others in the pipeline. Part due to demand. The reality for almost anything is you sell it for as much as you can.

So now we hit the slippery slope: Do we allow the government to step in and dictate price control?

There isn't a good answer. If the government sets a price or doesn't cover a drug under Medi-care, would Big Pharma go with the price or just stop making the drug? A patent is 20 years, but after trials and such, it is basically a 10 year period before it can go generic. During that time, they can charge what they want. They can also choose not to make it if it doesn't produce the profit required/desired, no matter how much it might help people.

Good arguments can be made either way.

Sure there is. Just look at nearly - virtually ANY - other first world nation on the planet. But according to you that'd be communism ! LOL.

I view it as "Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered."

I deal with a very similar issue in the defense industry. The problem is when you are in a sole source environment, you have the supplier being able to dictate their own profit margin.

Nobody should go to war with a company making a good profit and being rewarded for its innovation.

The problems I have are two fold. 1) When the company receives a good amount of Government funding to develop the end product, and then still try to make an insane margin, and 2) When you have guys like Pharma Bro charge prices that make "exorbitant" profit the understatement of understatements.

On top of all that - as with defense - you have companies that are leveraging a product that is absolutely necessary preserve American lives.

With a scenario 1 or 2 dynamic, combined with the essentiality of the end item, those companies are begging for the Government to step in and regulate it.

I'm sure that campaign donations have kicked that can down the road pretty effectively so far, though.

You're forgetting one thing in this whole scenario.

The obscene barriers to entry in these markets. Pharma and defense are so highly regulated that competition isn't very high because of cost of entry. Big Pharma companies that bring product to market have to not only cover the costs for that one drug, but also the many drugs they dumped money into and they failed. It's a couple million $ to bring a drug through clinical trials, and far more fail than succeed.

If these guys had more competition, then prices could be pushed down.

I didn't necessarily forget it, as much as I just didn't address it, which I probably should have.

I will actually one-up what you said and say it's not just the lack of companies being able to compete, but the fact that the ones who can compete are all merging with each other.

To use defense as a model, we used to have Lockheed, Northrop, Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Grumman, and more competing to build a platform. Now it's Lockheed, Boeing, and maybe Northrop to build a fighter platform.

There has to be a huge push to get competition in these industries. I totally agree. It's better for innovation. It's better for pricing. It's better for a lot of things.

In my experience, this also seems to be an area where you see double speak on the part of the companies. They want to be deregulated in ways that inhibit their profit realization, but then they also promote regulations that keep competition out.

The thing that really ruffles my feathers with drug companies is that the federal government spends billions upon billions of dollars annually in helping to supplement of their R&D so they can then turn around and continually raise their prices by claiming it's to pay for all of their R&D.

It's like they siphon tax dollars only to use what those tax dollars help create to rip us off later.

Yeah, I agree. There should be a tradeoff. If the Government helps fund R&D to get a drug/vaccine/whatever out into society, then there should be either a price limit, or there should be generic options, or some combination thereof.

Yeah we help pay for the R&D then it's cheaper to buy in both Europe and Canada. And a lot of people think our healthcare system is fine.

The American worker isn’t worth $15 an hour. To bad. Pay up suckers.

Common sense price caps like Canada has would help. But Big Pharma is in bed with congress.

That would be a government regulation. That won’t fly with those GOP’ers still on the hill.

Isnt just a GOP problem. Dems are equally guilty.

I agree. Campaign contributions go both ways.

...or with that one ex-president that gave big pharma execs a seat at the table in those closed door meetings he held to create his healthcare plan.

if big pharma was not at the table, we would probably have Medicare for all... There are consequences with staying with status quo.