Low Down Dirty Pharma
You have to be a pretty sadistic, greedy, mean-spirited, vile, wretched, and corrupt industry to overcharge the elderly and the poor (not mutually exclusive). But if anyone can be sure to sink to that level, it’s big Pharma!
Let’s see. You overcharge community health centers, which are already facing budget cuts, and trying to maintain the safety net in this country, taking care of the poor and working class of this country. And then, to top that, you raise the costs of drugs so that the Medicare prescription drug card discounts just maintain your current level of revenues! Brillant!
(And then you pay doctors $10,000 to prescribe your drugs.) If that’s not an industry that cares about the health of the population, I don’t know who does. I’m guessing GreaterRX won’t be covering these stories.
Please compare and contrast this post with the last post from June 17. Thank you.
If the contention is that pharma is able to exert pricing pressure because of a non-competitive, i.e. broken market environment, then that is indeed an undesirable (and illegal) situation.
If your observation is that big pharma practices price discrimination, extracting different prices to match the marginal demand (or desperation) of disparate demographics, then that may be socially unpalatable, but economically rational (not to mention perfectly legal – airfares being the canonical example).
However, if you are suggesting that big pharma be more socially responsible by subsidizing their product for those who cannot afford it, the question becomes whether they can do so without jeopardizing either the business model or the efficacy of the drug development process. If they can, then market forces dictate that they should already be doing so. But that burden does not, de jure, fall on the private sector. Do I get one guess as to where you think it should fall in that case?
Contention 1: agree somewhat. Should companies be adequately compensated? Yes. Should they have so much influence in the legislative process AND the power to set drug prices on a whim AND the power to get legislation passed saying that the government CANNOT use its buying power to get lower prices? Absolutely not. These giant multinational corps don’t want capitalism or competition. They want full market control.
#2: Yes. Socially disgusting. To take from those who have little is vile. Where are those corporate and business ethics we hear so much about? (And no, their practices are illegal. But, of course, the law has been written such that the government cannot fine or punish the companies for doing so.)
I am suggesting that PhARMA uses the R&D argument to bolster their profit margins, and people buy it too easily. They spend 3x on administration and advertising what they do on R&D. I agree, R&D isn’t cheap, but their drug price increases are *not* because they’re increasing R&D spending.
Market forces are not the invisible hand of God, Mr. Adam Smith. Market forces have no problem with slavery, and I hope we can all at least agree that said institution was unjust and inhumane.
mitworld has an interesting lecture by noam chomsky about how our current economic system distributes cost & risk while centralizating profit. this pattern is or course quite prominently seen in the pharma industry, where they receive substantial funding from the public sector but do not act in the public’s interest.about 1:38:00 into the lecture, during the q&a session, he goes on to mention a paper by dean baker which predicts the outcome of subsidizing 100% of pharma r&d with public funds (currently, ~40% of pharma r&d money is from the public coffer) and then having the resulting medication sold at market prices (i.e., as generics, without patent price protection). baker’s paper finds that the benefits to consumers would be huge (the savings at the state & federal gov’t level alone would nearly pay for all r&d, to say nothing of the savings to individual consumers).
Word. what graham said :>
Man, I read that article about drug companies overcharging, and I nearly blew my lid off (whatever that means). It’s one thing to deal with “market forces” and “delivering the most profits to shareholders” and blah de blah of pharmaceutical companies.
It’s another issue altogether when you ILLEGALLY (there’s a law against it) exploit community health centers and public hospitals by overcharging them when they are mandated to get at least a 15 percent discount.
And the worst part of it? The bushies don’t want to have government oversee drug companies to make sure they stick to the law. Who’s in bed with big pharma? who’s your daddy? (as michael moore says)