Cheap Drugs vs. Good Drugs
Thirty years ago, advertisements for Winston cigarettes asked, "What do you want--good grammar or good taste?"
Now, Forbes asks, "What do you want--good drugs or cheap drugs?"
Reporting on a study that looks at the issue of price controls on prescription drugs and how that might affect the development of new drugs, Johns Hopkins professor Gerald Anderson says, "The clear choice…is better access to drugs for Medicare beneficiaries or higher prices for drugs that may lead to more research and development."
Whole story here.
Reason's Ronald Bailey defended the outrageous profits earned by drug manufacturers in his great piece, "Goddamn the Pusher Man: Why does everyone seem to hate the pharmaceutical industry?" (One clue: It ain't because they're beautiful.)
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What amazes me about this faux question is that why is it assumed that the greater profits to fund R&D must come from US consumers alone (or nearly alone)?
Were US consumers allowed to follow cheap drug prices wherever they occur, over time US prices would fall and prices elsewhere would rise (at least in relative terms).
The pharmaceutical industry would just adjust it's business model, it wouldn't collapse.
However, I do see why they oppose this. Change of this magnitude would be difficult and cause plenty of companies a heap of trouble during the process.
Big deal.
What you all seem to leave out is that despite their free market driven benevolence the drug compainies are in cahoots with the government to fleece the public.
How is it a so called libertarian fails to notice? Let me run it down.
1. Anti-anxiety pills are a $40 bn a year market
2. Pot if legal would capture a significant part of this market
3. Now guess who the industrial leaders of drug prohibition are? Why the people who know most about what drugs are good for you and them. Big pharma.
There is a lot of rent seeking going on here and major efforts to have government erect large barriers to entry in the drug market. And just like the era when the transport industry controlled the ICC so now big pharma controls the FDA and the Congressmen who give it its marching orders.
How could it be otherwise?
End government subsidy to big pharma. End the drug war.
Hear, hear M. Simon!!!
Oh yeah. One other really weird thing. In the early stages of R&D, we tossed any drug that wasn't going to have an 80% or better profit margin going. Small companies could have gone after these compounds, but were almost always stopped by the FDA. Traditional capitists (those who place the movement of capital above the capital of technology) and government crats pretty much keep the market geared towards "Blockbuster" drugs. For more info on this, and some feds that tried to break the stranglehold, see the ALLHAT study.
got a question because I'm too lazy this morning to Google it and I've always been curious.
Is it a myth (my hunch says that it is) that Drug Companies spend more on Marketing than R&D or not?
thanks,
Lee:
No need to google it.. just read Ron Bailey's story. The short answer: it's a myth.
Lee, BMY sure did. That's why their stock plunged a few years back and is still down.
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