I'm quite sure this is only one example of "clever" ways BigPharma is sticking it to the taxpayers
The article is fascinating, good on WaPo for taking up the topic; you'll enjoy the comments too.
Thanks for the post.
Wonder whose campaign pockets they lined?
Doctors, meanwhile, may benefit when they choose the more expensive drug. Under Medicare repayment rules for drugs given by physicians, they are reimbursed for the average price of the drug plus 6 percent.
Who could have predicted this would happen? Seriously, who?
For later.
A friend of mine is a virologist. I joking asked him if he's cured any diseases lately. He tells me that drug companies aren't in the business of curing diseases. They're in the business of treating them.
How about some free market healthcare to cure our nation’s ills?
Avastin is not indicated for macular degeneration, but Lucentis does have that indication. The physicians who are treating macular degeneration with Avastin are prescribing off-label. There is no safety, efficacy or dosing data to support Avastin for macular degeneration. For Genentech to perform all the studies and trials in order to get a macular degeneration indication would cost Genentech about $1,000,000,000. Of course the FDA is asking for Genentech to do the work in order to change the labeling - it’s always easier to spend someone else billion dollars.
What is the common disease that causes blindness that they are talking about?
Perhaps, but in my particular case of macular degeneration, there is a difference between the two drugs. My doctor has used both on me and we found that with Avastin I was requiring an injection about every 3-4 weeks; with Lucentis, it's about every 4 months with the possibility that it might even stretch to 5 months or more. And, instead of having appointments every 3-4 weeks, he can now schedule me for 5-6 weeks.
I happened upon this thread by accident, yet it is about an affliction I have: Macular degeneration. It would be nice to post at least in parenthesis the name of the ailment the articles addresses. I just happened to see Mesta addressing another freeper, and since I try to read all her stuff I stopped to read the thread. BTW, my macular degeneration appears to be under control just taking a mega supplement daily. At my age, I probably will not live long enough to go completely blind, so I guess ‘it’s all good’.
That's not true, That "average price of the drug plus 6 percent" is a figure determined by the govt. and not indicative of the actual cost of the drug to the physician, which in most cases will cost the physician much more.
Example being my brother-in-law who is an oncologist who had to leave his private practice and become a hospital staff doctor because he was actually losing money on the super expensive chemotherapy drugs he had to administer to his patients. The cost to him by the pharmaceutical companies was more than what the govt. was willing to reimburse.
It should also be noted that drugs are indeed cheaper in Canada and realizing this, he asked his attorney if it was feasable for him to get his drugs from Canada and his attorney told him that if he tried, he'd go to jail........
The problem isn't with "Big Pharma", it's with our government........
You want price control? What happened back in the '70's when Carter put a price cap on the cost of gasoline? Rationing and long lines........
Do you want that from our drug industry?
I remember when doctors couldn’t take kickbacks. Back then they could lose their licenses.