Posted on 05/14/2007 9:02:12 AM PDT by oblomov
No need to provide any links. I’ll wait until you have the time to point out my errors. Standing by.
” Never mind all Washington’s hifalutin arguments about intellectual property, free trade and safety;’
Uhm, my Lipitor comes from Pfizer LLC, Auckland, New Zealand. So, the intellectual property is that of Pfizer, who also makes Lipitor in the US. And free trade IS me being able to buy something from a Canadian pharmacy in Winnipeg. As for safety, do you really think Pfizer makes unsafe Lipitor in New Zealand? Why ever would they?
Tell us all about all those innovative new drugs the Canadian pharmaceutical industry brings to the world. The Canadians, like so many other socialists, are getting a free ride thanks to the U.S.
That the ends justify the means in some people's minds, on a conservative forum, is baffling.
You need to live by your own tagline.
That's the nature of the life science industry. Technology is expensive to develop and commercialize.
I referenced Balco because they were trying to do it cheap.
That's not the way to endear yourself to government regulators. Nor should it be.
If your product needs to overcome an $800 million wall it's less than perfect competition.
That cost is for a new molecular entity and includes a lot of things like opportunity cost. The costs are high because the FDA is all about covering it's ass. It's not about protecting big pharma.
This may sound radical but we should do away with the FDA and rely on Civil Law to protect us from poisonous drugs
The FDA, at least on the drug side, is a bureaucratic behemoth that needs reform. However, it's a hell of a lot better than what existed before.
Phen Phen was taken off the market because 1% of the population had a bad reaction to it. That's nuts.
The FDA makes a lot of bad decisions on drugs that help more people than they hurt but this was not one of them. It's clear that Fen-Phen is responsible for the development of heart valve disease and there is no telling how many more would have been hurt if it had been left on the market. There are a lot of other anti-obesity treatments so pulling Fen-Phen was an easy decision.
How so?
People who expect me to wildly overpay for prescription drugs tell me it’s for my own good. Sound familiar?
The so-called reimportation legislation would force drug comapnies to sell a certain amount of product to Canada and other countries with price controls on drugs, whether they want to or not.
Right now, Imclone doesn’t sell Erbitux to Canada because Canada’s health service wanted too little money for it. But Byron Dorgan and his allies, among them the socialist advocates of “free trade” at FR, would force Imclone to sell it whether or not the price is acceptable to Imclone.
In what sense is that “free trade”?
That isn’t free trade.
My being able to buy prescription drugs from Winnipeg w/o govt interference, however, is.
What if the drugs you buy were no longer sold to Canada?
You're not overpaying. The socialists are underpaying. You live in a free market economy - a real economy, not some socialist utopia where government decides prices and profits. You act like there is no competition in the American drug industry. That's nonsense.
You want to sacrifice future innovation for perceived lower prices today. That's shortsighted and self-centered. My tagline refers to people like you.
My Lipitor comes from Pfizer at Auckland, New Zealand. It’s made by Pfizer. Canada is just a waypoint. I suppose I could deal with New Zealand direct, if I wished. Is that a bad thing? How’s that different from buying a foreign car?
No, your tagline refers to those who think they know what’s best for someone else. And I agree with you. Let the market decide, not the nanny-staters.
It doesn’t have to be sold to NZ either. What if the other countries decide not to sell to you because they get severe supply controls to go along with their price controls? Because that is what is in the process of happening.
You say, sold ‘to’ NZ.
It is, as far as I can tell, manufactured there. By Pfizer.
NZ may not even have price controls, but I don’t know.
I’ve had pharma that was made in Turkey, too.
Maybe it’s like the internet. Customer demand treats intransigent nationalism like network damage and routes around it.
There is a common misconception that Canada 'forces' pharma suppliers to lower prices. It has no such powers: Canada just buys only those drugs which are offered to it at what it deems to be a good price. This is why 57% of American-made medications are not available in Canada at all.
A related lie is that Canada threatens to invalidate the patents for overpriced drugs to produce its own supply. Actually, only developing countries get to do this (the "TRIPS Agreement"). Canada observes the same international patent laws that we do.
Move to Arizona instead. Retirement communities offer organized "geezer connection" bus tours to Mexico.
Move to Arizona instead. Retirement communities offer organized "geezer connection" bus tours to Mexico.
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