Category: Pharma

Katie Porter and Her White Board

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Representative Katie Porter, (D-CA) does her homework, and she knows her numbers, and when she whips out her white board, someone is in for a can of whup ass.

In this case, it was the Richard Gonzalez, the CEO of AbbVie, which is gouging patients for its Humira Arthritis drug.

She showed that the money for R&D is dwarfed by advertising, and executive compensation, particularly that compensation which is driven by stock buybacks:

Or, as Porter observed: “You lie to patients when you charge them twice as much for an unimproved drug, when you tell us that R&D justifies those price increases. The Big Pharma fairy tale is one of groundbreaking R&D that justifies astronomical prices. But the pharma reality is that you spend most of that money making money for yourself and your shareholders.”

Roll the tape, it’s beautiful: (It’s also not that difficult if you aren’t spending 8 hours a day dialing for dollars for your DCCC dues)

New York Times Editors Come Out for State Owned Means of Production

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Not joking, they just wrote an editorial suggesting that not only should Covid-19 vaccine IP protections be suspended, but that the US government should set up its own state owned vaccine plants.

They have gone full Pinko:

The United States is well on its way to protecting Americans from the coronavirus. It’s time to help the rest of the world. By marshaling this nation’s vast resources to produce and distribute enough vaccines to meet global demand, the United States would act in keeping with the nation’s best traditions and highest aspirations while advancing its geopolitical and economic interests. It is a moment of both obligation and opportunity.

………

Covax, the World Health Organization’s initiative to pool vaccine resources, remains profoundly underfunded and has failed to meet even its modest target of vaccinating one-fifth of the population in the Global South. Without a major course correction, the rest of the world will have to wait until 2023 or later for large-scale vaccination initiatives like the one underway in the United States. The consequences of this disparity are expected to be severe. Hundreds of thousands more people will get sick and die from a disease that is now preventable with a vaccine. The global economy will contract by trillions of dollars, according to the International Chamber of Commerce, and tens of millions of people will plummet into extreme poverty as the virus continues to fester and evolve in the world’s more vulnerable reaches. 

………

President Biden can start by announcing that the United States intends to help and by appointing a vaccine czar to oversee the expansion of vaccine production. The federal government has ample legal power to compel the participation of the pharmaceutical companies, including the sharing of critical information and technologies. Congress has appropriated $16 billion to scale up production, most of which remains unspent.

Increasing manufacturing capacity has proved tricky. The global demand for vaccines may be high now, but once the coronavirus pandemic recedes, it will plummet back to normal levels. Increased public ownership, for its part, would ensure that vaccine-production capacity is ready for future pandemics, which are inevitable — potentially including new coronavirus variants for which routine boosters may be required.

To this end, the administration should consider taking a page from the Department of Energy playbook: Create publicly owned manufacturing facilities and contract with private companies to run them. (Several of the D.O.E.’s federally owned laboratories are run by private companies like General Electric and Bechtel.)

(emphasis mine)

I would note that the suggestion of federally owned manufacturing facilities is a good thing, and any future research or development contracts should require that these sites have a royalty free license.

But subcontracting to private companies to run them?  Too much of an opportunity for the sort of rat-f%$#ery that has pharma paying generic competitors not to produce.

Drugs factories are not like nuclear weapons factories:  Anyone can build one.

Have the government run these facilities.

A Stopped Clock Moment

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The 2nd worst Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin, has announced his support for IP waivers for generic Covid vaccines.

Of course, this might have something to do with his Kid’s business, as Heather Bresch probably still has outstanding stock options with the now a part of  Upjohn, Mylan.

Mylan is/was a generic drug manufacturer :

Sen. Joe Manchin expressed support for the World Trade Organization proposal to temporarily suspend enforcement of patent and intellectual property enforcement for Covid-19 medical treatments.

The waiver request, led by India and South Africa and backed by a coalition of countries, would allow more widespread global production and distribution of generic coronavirus vaccines, tests, and treatments.

Asked about the waiver proposal on Thursday, Manchin said it sounded like a good idea.

“I’ve always been a supporter of generics coming on,” said Manchin, speaking to The Intercept on Capitol Hill.

I really don’t care what his motivation is, it lends a some “Centrist” cred to the effort to place limits on the reach of IP.

The West Virginia Democrat referenced the fact that the U.S. government financed the research, development, and domestic deployment of coronavirus vaccines. He noted that the drug companies “shouldn’t” generate profits from a product sponsored by taxpayers.

This qualifier applies to every major pharmaceutical development over the past few decades.

Big pharma has devolved into an orgy of rent-seeking.  (Which seems to be my theme for tonight)

The Vaccine Makers are Hostage Takers

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Something that we are missing in the story of the vaccines is how the vaccine manufacturers are attempting to hold whole countries hostage.

It’s not a good look:

Pfizer has backed down over its controversial demand that the South African government put up sovereign assets guaranteeing an indemnity against the cost of any future legal cases. During Covid-19 vaccine negotiations, the company sought indemnity against civil claims from citizens who had experienced adverse vaccine effects – meaning that the government would have to cover the costs instead.

On Wednesday, the South African health minister, Zweli Mkhize, voiced frustrations about “difficult and sometimes unreasonable” terms his country’s government had been presented with during contract negotiations with vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer.

In a briefing letter sent ahead of his appearance at the parliamentary health committee, Mkhize said one condition in particular demanded by Pfizer was “too risky” – that the country put up sovereign assets as potential collateral.

In its negotiations to provide vaccines to countries around the world, Pfizer has been asking governments for wide-ranging indemnity protection against any civil claims a citizen might file. This means that if Pfizer was to be sued by someone who had suffered a rare adverse effect from the vaccine then the government, not the company, would have to pay for legal costs and compensation. This would apply even if the case had been brought as a result of the company’s own acts of negligence, fraud or malice. In other negotiations, Pfizer went further.

The company required some Latin American governments to put up sovereign assets – which could include federal bank reserves, embassy buildings or military bases – as a guarantee against indemnifying the cost of future legal cases. This was reported by the Bureau in February and picked up by more than 100 media organisations worldwide.

………

Experts have raised concerns about the fact that Pfizer and some other big pharma companies have demanded complete confidentiality during the recent vaccine negotiations, which would prevent the public from knowing about issues including indemnity protection and price. In South Africa, there are fears that any such secrecy clauses could undo public trust built up by years of anti-corruption work.

………

The delayed Pfizer deal arrives as South Africa is facing a third wave of Covid-19. In total, the country has recorded nearly 1.6m cases and more than 53,000 deaths.

We need to be clear about this:  The pharmaceutical industry will let nothing stand between them and their outrageous rents and are now behaving like mob bosses.

Their power needs to broken thoroughly and completely.

Manchin to Support Haaland for Secretary of the Interior

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After publicly playing Hamlet for a few days, Joe Manchin (DINO-WV) has announced that he will support the nomination of Deb Halland as Secretary of the Interior.

Why her, she participated in protests against the Keystone XL pipeline, which as a VERY pro fossil fuel Senator from a coal state he should find even more unsettling than a few mean Tweets about Republicans made by Neera Tanden.

The idea that only CEO contributes to a company’s growth and not all employees is really pernicious https://t.co/2d9xgU0IHJ

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) August 27, 2016

Pretty mild, actually

It turns out that Manchin is probably lying about his reason to oppose Tanden.

It seems that his daughter, Heather Bresch, academic fabulist and CEO of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, was criticized by Tanden for raising her own pay while gouging consumers for the Epipen® anaphylaxis treatment

This would not be the first time that Manchin has used his official position to benefit his daughter. His finger prints are all over an effort to get Bresch an MBA degree that she did not earn. 

So Joe Manchin’s actions here are even more stupid, sordid, and corrupt than I had previously imagined.

Still no sympathy for Ms. Tanden though.  She’s a hack and a psychopath, and she shut down a publication in response to unionization, so am firmly of the belief that she should not be kitchen staff supervisor* at the White House, much less director of the OMB.

*It’s a reference to the comic book Cerebus the Aardvark.

Those Old Family Ties

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Bummer of a Birth Mark, Jim

One of the stories floating around right now is that Mylan Pharmaceuticals jacked up the price of EpiPens by over 400% over the past few years.

Given the state of the American pharmaceutical industry, we’ve seen something similar from the 3 manufacturers of insulin colluding on price hikes,  it’s not a particularly surprising or unique state of affairs.

What is news however is that Heather Bresch, the company’s CEO, is the daughter of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Mylan is one of the most generous donors to him.

In fact, a former Mylan lobbyists, Michael Garrison, appointed  president of the University of West Virginia by Manchin when he was governor had to resign in disgrace when he bent the rules to give Heather Bresch an unearned MBA.

So now this linkup is hitting the mainstream news:

The growing congressional scrutiny of pharmaceutical giant Mylan over the high cost of EpiPens could prove awkward for Sen. Joe Manchin.

 The West Virginia Democrat’s daughter, Heather Bresch, is chief executive of the company, which appears to have hiked the price of the epinephrine auto-injector by 400 percent since 2007. The device, which is used to treat severe allergic reactions, now costs more than $600 per dose.

 This price increase has become a public relations disaster for Mylan and at least four of Manchin’s Senate colleagues are either pressing the company to reduce the cost of EpiPens, asking it to explain the price increase or requesting federal regulators to investigate the matter. Manchin is not a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has shown the most interest in probing Mylan’s pricing practices, and so far the senator is not discussing the issue.

Manchin has spent his time in the Senate being a Joe Lieberman Democrat, so I have absolutely no sympathy for the fact that he is getting jammed up by this.

Wait ……… Who is Calling the EpiPen Manufacturer Vultures?

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The manufacturer of the EpiPen, Mylan pharmaceuticals, has been raising the price of the pens by 15% every 6 months for years.

It’s gotten so bad that pharmaBro Martin Shrelki has just called the company vultures:

A growing chorus is calling on the Mylan pharmaceutical company to justify its price hikes on EpiPens, a potentially life-saving medication for children and others facing fatal allergies that has little real competition.

In 2007, a two-pack of the epinephrine-filled devices went for $56.64 wholesale, according to data gathered by Connecture, a health insurance data specialist. Now it’s jumped to $365.16, an increase of 544.77 percent. Since the end of 2013, the price has gone up by 15 percent every other quarter.

Doctors, parents, patients, and a former presidential candidate are speaking out on social media — and negative comments are filling up Mylan’s Facebook page following an NBCNews.com story Wednesday.

………

Even Martin Shkreli, the disgraced former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, has weighed in.

“These guys are really vultures. What drives this company’s moral compass?” he told NBC News in a phone interview.

In 2015, Shkreli famously jacked up the price of Turing’s malaria and HIV medicine Darapim overnight, from $13.50 to $750, a move that earned him a grilling by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February — and the nickname “Pharma Bro” for his seemingly carefree attitude toward affordable medication.

Our model of pharmaceutical production and research and development is fundamentally broken.

We have expanded IP protections on drugs over the past 40 years, and what we have seen is that drugs have become less affordable, and efforts of the drug companies have moved from cures to finding ways to evergreen those IP protections.

Well, This Explains a Lot

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It turns out that over the past 70 years, many medical conditions that were considered normal are not considered pathologies that require aggressive treatment.

There is a lot of money in this, which raises the obvious question, “cui bono?”

As many as 16 million Americans are prone to screaming and pounding on the dashboard when someone cuts them off in traffic. Another 7 million are fully capable of devouring a whole box of cookies in front of the TV.

There are 14 million men with low testosterone, 9 million women with low sexual desire — and tens of millions of people with bladders that are too active and blood sugar that’s a little too high.

The common thread: All have non-life-threatening conditions that for most of the 20th century were not considered a part of mainstream medicine. Some did not exist at all as formal disorders.

Each of the conditions, from intermittent explosive disorder to overactive bladder disorder, is the product of a new or expanded definition. These definitions come from medical societies or researchers who get money from drug companies.

Not to worry though, I’m sure that the invisible hand of the market, and the “skin in the game” required by Obamacare, will fix all this.

Something to Hide

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Purdue Pharma, best known as the manufacturer of the opiate Oxycontin, has been fighting tooth and nail to keep their marketing tactics from the public, but today a judge ordered those records unsealed:

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, lost a legal battle Wednesday to keep records and testimony about its bestselling and widely abused painkiller secret.

A judge in Pike County, Kentucky, a region hard-hit by prescription painkiller abuse, granted a motion by a news outlet to unseal records from a lawsuit by the state accusing the company of fraud, conspiracy and negligence in the development and marketing of the drug.

Purdue settled that suit in December for $24 million without any admission of wrongdoing.

Circuit Judge Steven Combs granted the request of Boston Globe-affiliated investigative health news outlet STAT to unseal the documents, writing: “The Court sees no higher value than the public (via the media) having access to these discovery materials so that the public can see the facts for themselves.”

The judge said the order would not take effect for 32 days, allowing Purdue time to appeal.

Let’s be here:  Purdue has been aware of its potential for abuse and its addictive properties for a very long time, and it is clear that they used these to increase sales.

They are no different from the corner drug pusher, and seeing their marketing exposed to the light of day, with the resulting social pressure and prosecutions, would please me no end.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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Pharma bro Martin Shkreli hasw taken the 5th in response to a Congressional inquiry into price gouging in drugs:

The founder and former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination on Wednesday, and he won’t comply with a subpoena for documents issued from a Senate panel investigating pharma drug pricing tactics.

The 32-year-old Shkreli was also subpoenaed to appear before a different panel, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to testify about the price of a life-saving drug he increased by more than 5,000 percent.

Shkreli became the poster child for greed last year after he raised the price of Daraprim—used to treat parasitic infections—from $13.50 a pill to $750. A single pill once sold for $1. Now facing criminal charges that he allegedly defrauded investors, Shkreli has said he should have boosted prices for the drug even more.

Let’s be clear:  He has a right not to testify against himself, but generally it doesn’t apply to, you know, physical proof.

And yes, he is a ratf%$# who deserves to spend the rest of his life in gaol.

Can Someone Please Hang Him from the Empire State Building by His Underwear?

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Martin Shkreli is at it again:

After dropping $2 million on a Wu-Tang Clan album, the pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has found a new project: making an essential treatment unaffordable for poor immigrants from Latin America.

Shkreli, otherwise known as “pharma bro,” gained notoriety earlier this year when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, increased the price of a drug used to treat AIDS patients from around $13.50 to $750. He’s now the CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, which recently announced its plans to submit benznidazole, a treatment for Chagas disease purchased earlier this month, for Food and Drug Administration approval next year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 300,000 people in the United States have the deadly disease. Most of them are immigrants from Latin America, where as many as 8 million people are infected.

………

Right now, doctors in the U.S. obtain benznidazole free of charge through the CDC. According to Rachel Cohen, the regional executive director of the Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative in North America, the drug sells in Latin America for somewhere between $60 and $100 for each course of treatment. Both of these would change the moment the FDA approved benznidazole from any company—and Shkreli, in particular, seems determined to price this drug out of reach of the people who need it. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, KaloBios wrote that it expects to price the Chagas drug similarly to antivirals for Hepatitis C, which can cost almost $100,000 for a single course of treatment in the United States.

………

The CDC currently purchases benznidazole from a Brazilian company. They used to send less than a dozen treatments a year to physicians across the country, according to Susan Montgomery, who leads the epidemiology team at the CDC’s Parasitic Diseases Branch. But after blood banks started testing people for Chagas in 2007, that number spiked.

In theory, FDA approval for benznidazole would make it more accessible to patients: Right now, because benznidazole isn’t approved, a patient who needs the drug has to be enrolled in a clinical trial in order to receive it from the CDC. In practice, though, the current plans for pricing will negate any good that could come from removing the drug’s “experimental” label.

………

Recently, the FDA added Chagas to a special program for neglected diseases. If a pharmaceutical company submits a drug for a disease on the program’s list, the FDA gives the company a “priority review voucher.” That voucher lets companies bring another drug to the FDA for expedited review, usually around six months between submitting the application and receiving a decision (a process that usually takes years. The hope is that the program will incentivize companies to invest in new treatments for neglected diseases that afflict the poorest regions of the world. But companies aren’t required to come up with new drugs to get those fast-track vouchers. The drugs only have to be new to the FDA. (Companies can also sell those vouchers for big money—last August, for example, United Therapeutics sold its voucher for $350 million.)

Last month, Doctors Without Borders, joined by a number of other public-health organizations, asked the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to amend this voucher program. The groups argued that companies should be eligible only if they actually invest in researching and developing new treatments for neglected diseases, and that they should be required to submit a strategy for how they would keep the drugs accessible for patients.

“If this price hike were to happen, it would be a complete disaster for Chagas patients in the United States,” Cohen said. “People affected by this disease in the United States are poor, are marginalized, have very limited access to health care to begin with. It would be catastrophic.”

2 years ago, on the occasion of actor Jack Klugman’s death, I noted that one of the things that he was lauded for was lobbying for the Orphan Drug Act of 1983.

I took issue, and said that the effect of the act was to manufacture non-patent monopolies that primarily served to raise the cost of drugs through rent-seeking behavior.

The IP restrictions and incentives that are a part of the US medication development regime are killing and impoverishing us.

How about price controls and compulsory licensing?  That sounds good.

Martin Shkreli Has Just Made Express Scripts® a Hero

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This is a bigger shock than Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father.

Deeply and ineluctiblky evil pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts®, in partnership with the compounding pharmacy Imprimis®, will offer a $1.00 clone of Turing Pharmaceutical’s Dataprim anti-parasite drug:

Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefits manager in the U.S., said on Tuesday it will partner with Imprimis Pharmaceuticals to provide a $1 alternative to Daraprim, the 62-year-old drug for a rare parasitic infection. In September, the company that owned the drug stoked outrage when it hiked the drug’s price by more than 5,000 percent overnight.

 Imprimis, a California compounding pharmaceutical company, said in October it would make the alternative—a compounded formulation of the active ingredient in Daraprim, pyrimethamine, and another drug, leucovorin—available for $99 for a 100-count bottle, or less than $1 per pill.

 That compares with a price of $750 per pill for the drug provided by Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company that acquired Daraprim earlier this year and dramatically raised its price from $13.50 a tablet to $750.

Express Scripts® is so evil and incompetent that it stuns Richard Bruce Cheney, but Martin Shkreli has just allowed them to be heroes.

This is a mindf%$# on a level I would heretofore think impossible.

He’s Back!

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Remember Martin Shkreli?

The parasite who (ironically) bought the anti-parasite, and then raised the price by over 5,000%.

After the media sh%$ storm, he promised to lower the price.

He lied:

Turing Pharmaceuticals AG will not reverse its decision to raise the price of a decades-old drug, Daraprim, by more than 5,000 percent, backing out of previous statements that it would cut the cost by the end of the year.

In an announcement on Tuesday, the company said that the list price of Daraprim, which jumped from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill earlier this year, will not change. Instead, the company will offer hospitals up to 50 percent discounts and will make other adjustments to help patients afford Daraprim, a drug used to treat a parasitic infection and often given to HIV patients.

Out of the goodness of their hearts though, they will be selling a smaller bottle to make it a bit easier for hospitals to stock the drug.

We need villagers, torches, and pitchforks.

Do You Know What Drug in Your Medicine Cabinet is Most Likely to Kill You?

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If you answered Acetaminophen (Tylenol) you would be right.

An overdose of the drug can destroy your liver, and for some people, toxic effects can be as little as twice the therapeutic dose.

Well, the FDA is looking at tightening up regulations on the drug, and the maker of Tylenol ramped up a lobbying campaign to prevent the FDA protecting the public:

Recently filed court documents show the makers of Tylenol planned to enlist the White House and lawmakers to block the Food and Drug Administration from imposing tough new safety restrictions on acetaminophen, the iconic painkiller’s chief ingredient.

 An executive with McNeil Consumer Healthcare – which counts Tylenol as its flagship product – told the board of directors for parent company Johnson and Johnson about a campaign to “influence the FDA” and block recommendations made by an agency advisory panel in 2009.

 About 150 Americans a year die by accidentally taking too much acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. The toll does not have to be so high. Read the story.

 After Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s top drug regulator, put off meeting with McNeil executives, the company’s president, Peter Luther, sent out an August 2009 email.

 “We’re being too nice and too worried about stepping on FDA’s toes. It may be time to let members of Congress to put some pressure on FDA,” Luther wrote to other top executives. ”We have to make this our top priority and pull out all stops.”

 Acetaminophen is considered safe when taken as directed. But in higher doses, the drug can cause liver damage and death. Studies show the drug is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the U.S., with fatalities increasing seven-fold in the decade between 1995 and 2005 to more than 200 a year.

 ………

 The previously unreported lobbying campaign was disclosed as part of a trial scheduled to start today in Atlantic City that promises to draw new scrutiny to McNeil’s efforts to protect its painkiller from additional regulation and disclosures about the full extent of its risks.

 The case pits McNeil against Regina Jackson, a New Jersey state employee who claims she was hospitalized with elevated liver enzymes after inadvertently exceeding the daily recommended dose for Extra Strength Tylenol for a couple of days.

 The Atlantic City case is being watched closely as it is the first to come to trial of more than two hundred lawsuits currently pending in state and federal courts that allege McNeil knew its drug was potentially dangerous while promoting its safety.

 As detailed in a 2013 investigation by ProPublica and This American Life, McNeil has opposed warning labels, dosage restrictions and even public awareness campaigns over concerns of profitability.

 At the same time, the investigation found that the FDA has delayed implementing suggestions to improve the safety of acetaminophen, taken by tens of millions of Americans every week. Though hearings began more than 38 years ago, the agency has yet to finalize regulations for the safe use of the drug.

 ………

 The proposed lobbying campaign arose in response to a June 2009 meeting of more than three dozen scientists, researchers and pharmacists convened by the FDA to review the safety of acetaminophen.

 The panel of independent experts endorsed a sweeping set of reforms. They recommended that the FDA reduce the total daily dose of acetaminophen, and make extra-strength pills available only by prescription.

 McNeil officials viewed the recommendations as a threat to sales of Extra Strength Tylenol, according to R. Clay Milling, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys. McNeil makes about $400 million in revenue from its extra-strength line, compared with only about $14 million from regular strength Tylenol, Milling told the court, according to a transcript.

 Milling, who reviewed internal McNeil documents as part of the lawsuit, told the court that a senior McNeil executive made a presentation to the Johnson and Johnson board about a plan that included contacting the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and lawmakers.

 ………

 The current recommended daily dose for the drug is four grams per day — the equivalent of eight extra strength pills. But occasional reports in scientific literature have documented liver damage occurring after taking as little as two extra pills per day for several days.

 The agency has worried about the prevalence of acetaminophen on the market — McNeil and its generic competitors have developed hundreds of over-the-counter products that contain the drug, increasing the risk that a consumer could inadvertently ingest dangerous levels.

 The most recent FDA data show that acetaminophen remains, by far, the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, with the number of cases increasing.

(emphasis mine)

Pharma greed is not just some asshole hedge fund puke raising prices.

It’s also stuff like this, where companies like Johnson & Johnson call in chips to bought and paid for politicians so that they can keep killing people.

In fact, I think that the guys at J&J are worse.  Unlike Martin Shkreli they knew that they were lobbying for the opportunity to profit off of killing hundreds of people a year.

1000 Words on Big Pharma Research Spending

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9 Out Of 10 Big Pharma Companies Spent More On Marketing Than On R&D

I would also note that 84% of the basic R&D funding is by the taxpayers.

What I am talking about is the research that discovers the basic science that leads to drugs.

I would argue that if we were to repeal the Bayh-Dole act, and once again require that federally funded inventions be assigned to the federal government, we would get more innovation, because universities would not be acting like private companies regarding their (our) inventions, and it would save enormous amounts of money, particularly with regard to pharmaceuticals.

The Washington consensus, which is that no matter how badly the private entities loot the rest of society, we must privatize everything, because ……… Capitalism!

It’s why we have hepatitis C drugs that are costing over $1,000.00 a pill.

As an alternative, have the government fund taking basic research to a marketable drug, and then allow drug manufacturers to bid for the right to manufacture those medications.

H/t The Big Picture.

Insurance Companies Go Postal on Advair, Sales Collapse

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It appears that pharmacy managers have decided that spending 5x as much as a French patient does is stupid:

Hallelujah. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d praise an insurance company. But the proverbial Atlas just shrugged.
Insurance company pharmacy benefit managers, who have apparently had it with drug companies charging American consumers ridiculously high, and ever-increasing, prices for prescription drugs, are starting to say “enough.”

 At the top of the list is my asthma drug, Advair.

 Some big insurance company pharmacy benefits managers are simply no longer permitting their plans to cover Advair. Or at best, they’ve relegated Advair to the lower “third tier,” which means the patient has to pay so much of the price that they simply won’t buy the drug at all.
As a result, Advair sales plummeted 30% this year in the US.

(emphasis mine)

It’s a battle between two groups of parasites, and I hope that there is a way for both of them to ose.

Come to think of it, there is, it’s called Single Payer, bitches.

What, You Mean $1000.00 a Pill is too Expensive?

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A few months back, I wrote of push-back from an NGO about the price of Gilead Sciences’ Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi.

Well the World Health Organization and the pharmacy benefits management company Express Scripts are pushing back as well.

While the WHO is engaging in fairly typical hand wringing:

Gilead Sciences’ new hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, will cost $84,000 for a 12-week treatment plan, rounding out to $1,000 a day. Bound to cause a whirlwind among investors and the healthcare world, the World Health Organization has stepped in.

 The drug is facing protests in the United States because of the excessively high price that Gilead Sciences set for their new product. Despite its potential effectiveness – it is projected to cure 90% of the targeting hepatitis C patients – its gross income will exceed that of every other pharmaceutical drug if a majority of 150 million hepatitis C patients purchase it.

 As a result, the World Health Organization is urging Gilead Sciences to make the drug cheaper and more accessible to help those in dire need of the medication and to avoid creating tremendous problems for insurance companies and investors. But pharmaceutical companies argue that they need to charge high prices on new effective drugs because they need to cover the expensive cost of development.

Express Scripts is playing some serious, and very well deserved, hardball:

Express Scripts Holding Co. (ESRX), a pharmacy benefit manager that handles more than 1 billion prescriptions annually in the U.S., is ratcheting up its effort to force Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) to cut the $84,000 price of its new hepatitis C pill Sovaldi.

 Express Scripts plans to ask its clients, composed of national employers, health insurance plans and government agencies, to join a coalition that would stop using Sovaldi once a rival medicine is approved for the U.S., expected next year, said Steven Miller, chief medical officer of the St. Louis-based company. Express Scripts said in December it may block reimbursement for Foster City, California-based Gilead’s pill once other new hepatitis C therapies are on the market.

 “What they have done with this particular drug will break the country,” Miller said in a telephone interview. “It will make pharmacy benefits no longer sustainable. Companies just aren’t going to be able to handle paying for this drug.”

 Cara Miller and Amy Flood, Gilead spokeswomen, didn’t return phone calls yesterday seeking comment. The company has previously justified the price for Sovaldi by saying it would pay for itself by avoiding future complications from the virus.

(emphasis mine)

Note that Sovaldi has been granted a breakthrough designation by the FDA, which allows the drug to hit the market faster, for which the US government, and the taxpayers got a consideration of ……… nothing at all.

Basically the declaration of “breakthrough” status, and that is the term the 2010 law uses, is a subsidy to the manufacturer, both extending the time available to Gilead under exclusivity, and reducing capital costs by allowing revenue to start earlier.

Maybe the FDA should include a “reasonable and justifiable pricing” clause to things like this.