Posted on 08/17/2018 8:33:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
Abusive, monopolistic behavior is never popular: just ask John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, or J.P. Morgan. Nor, for that matter, is it sustainable, no matter how many high powered lobbyists you hire to control the debate in Washington, DC. Sooner or later, monopolists back the wrong horse, and someone comes to power who owes them nothing. Just ask President Theodore Roosevelt, and now President Donald Trump.
But where Roosevelt famously wrung the life out of the aforementioned tycoons and their trusts, President Trump faces two very different but no less abusive foes: the Snowflake Barons of the tech sector, and the glorified drug dealers of Big Pharma. And while Trump has only thrown Twitter barbs at tech, the fact is that he is tightening the noose on Big Pharma with the speed and efficiency of the world’s most enthusiastic hangman. He is doing this because of the sector’s outrageously high prices, to say nothing of their arguably being responsible for the opioid crisis.
When it comes to their prices, Pharma has no good defense, so they’ve been forced to rely on an endless number of scapegoats, to try and take the heat off themselves for as long as they can. For a while, they tried to target children’s hospitals, rural hospitals, and basically any other hospital that could get their products at a voluntary discount, absurdly claiming that those discounts forced them to charge everyone else more. That bought them some time, and more credulity than they deserved, but has since proven inaccurate, since the hospitals have gotten less money, but the prices have not come down.
Pharma also has tried to game the system to keep their main competitors in the United States – generic drug competitors – from charging actual market prices, all so they can claim that their prices are less outlandish than they are. They claim the policies they favor to do this are important for the sake of safety. This has backfired, because the generic companies have taken their message to Washington, and persuaded those with an interest in both the free market and safety to produce a bill that reconciles both, namely the CREATES Act, which requires pharmaceutical companies to sell samples of their off-patent drugs to FDA-approved generic manufacturers. Unsurprisingly, Pharma hates this bill and has tried to kill it.
Then, Pharma tried to claim that the problem was other countries, and here they at least had something of a point. The massive amounts of price controls, advertising bans, and other anti-Pharma policies employed abroad essentially make America the one goose that can lay golden eggs for Pharma. Pharma may turn a small profit abroad – the available data is unclear – but it’s nowhere near the mountain of money they make here. Unfortunately for Pharma, President Trump took this defense off the table by doing something about it and trying to address the disparity through trade negotiations.
All of which leads up to a simple point: Pharma is running out of enemies to blame for the prices they’re charging. Which, if their most recent target is any guide, is about to lead to a hell of a lot of unintentional comedy.
Thus, Republican congressman Buddy Carter (R-GA), a major recipient of pharma donations, recently emerged from the woodwork to claim that the people responsible for high drug prices are actually a very small group of people known as Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). These are basically the people who negotiate drug prices on behalf of groups of individuals, or collections of groups, in an effort to keep them low for those specific people/groups. Much like Pharma’s former “actually the children’s hospitals did it” argument, this claim that everyone suffers because some people get prices at a discount is ridiculous.
Don’t take my word for it. The data shows the same thing. A recent study by America’s Health Insurance Plans showed that the actual thing that keeps drug prices high is not some random group of negotiators holding Pharma’s feet to the fire, but rather – surprise, surprise, the lack of competition in the pharmaceutical market. Health Affairs also noted that, of the $480 billion spent on prescription medications in 2016, $323 billion of it went directly to Pharma companies’ profits. A measly $23 billion, or 4 percent, went to PBMs. Pharma basically is eating more than half the pie, while complaining about the one guy with a measly slice in the corner.
Rep. Carter and his donors should be embarrassed, but I suspect we’re well past that. Desperate people and desperate industries do not have the luxury of embarrassment. Nor, for that matter, does the US have the luxury of paying Pharma’s high prices without scrutinizing their ridiculous dissembling. Here’s hoping President Trump goes on tightening the noose on Pharma and on freeloading foreign countries, and that neither Pharma nor those foreign countries ever take American consumers for granted again.
So...drugs at non-market prices are a right in the US...mmmmmmmkay...
I’m 64 and have not used any over the counter drugs in 9 years. And that time I used a single high blood pressure pill and threw the rest away.
Medical marijuana is killing big Pharma for a lot of stuff. The cat’s out of the bag. Pandora’s box has finally been opened. There is no going back. Big Pharma’s reign is as good as over. So is Big Health Care Insurance.
While not ethical, thanks to Congress, it is legal to pay a competitor not to produce a generic drug of theirs. By threats (of lawsuits), collusion and dubious federal protections, we do not have a competitive drug market. Plus we subsidize the rest of the world. Some astute patients take medical vacations and see the world at no cost or cheaper by getting treatments elsewhere because of drug prices.
Trump needs to tighten a noose around the Tech Snowflakes too.
See post four, oh ethically challenged one. And that is just part of it.
Profit- Our Most Important Product.
Sure, the pharmaceutical companies whine and say they spend enormous money on the development and testing of new drugs, and in many instances it avails them nothing, as the drug either is not approved by FDA for the purposes stated, or they may make claims for the drug, even if approved, that do not take into consideration the huge lawsuits they face when the drug turns out to have side effects that are perhaps as debilitating as the disease it was intended to treat.
But pharmaceuticals may not be the way to treat a vast array of human disorders. Clean living, eating well and at least a modicum of exercise, principles that are already known, but perhaps not sufficiently well taught to the young, would do far more to improve the general state of health than all the “miracle drugs” that have been introduced in just my lifetime. Hell, they still did not understand the full significance of so simple a drug as aspirin until only very recently. Even hydrogen peroxide, that other old standby, keeps getting re-discovered. And don’t overlook apple cider vinegar, one of Grandma’s home remedies, to correct a number of bodily imbalances.
The solution to a government-created problem is never more government.
The reason drug prices are so high is drug companies abuse the monopoly given to them by the US government via patents.
I am all for pharmas making tons of money with their drugs and support patents.
But I am also for stripping away (i.e., making less government) the patent rights for companies that abuse their patent protection by price gouging.
This is the simple, and conservative, answer to the issue.
A friend just went through the 12 week cure for Hepatitis C - cost per pill? $1000.
Two words: Tort Reform.
They don’t need scapegoats ... they own almost every single congress critter in DC.
I tried that, and ended up with a dissected aorta.
Not all drugs are evil. God gave us brains for a reason, and we ought to be happy and thankful that we have the intelligence to create things that make us more comfortable and treat the worst of ailments. We don't have to be cheerleaders for science, or "big pharma," but we ought to give credit where it's due, and accept those things as God's gift.
I hope not, because the moment that happens we'll cease to innovate, and many diseases will go untreated and uncured.
I agree with that. My wife takes claritin.
I’ll make a comment on this subject and immediately be called a socialist or worse.
The bottom line is that the medical-industrial complex is absolutely nothing even remotely like capitalism or free enterprise, yet its defenders constantly hide behind those words.
At 68 and not needing such medication, I did ask a pharmacist about the cost of Levitra (still under patent) when the Wife I had a weekend get-away planned and I wanted to Be All I Can Be (thanks Army pr). Cost: $400 for 5 pills. Needless to say, I passed and things were good on the get-away. Guess that's an extra benefit from the treadmill every other day...haha.
Yet you can buy the same meds out of country for a fraction of the US prices. I get the cost of research and development and Fedgov regulations, but why so cheaper out country?
That would require changing the overall business model for the companies that innovate new medications and treatments, but who do you sell a failed new drug to? It's not like shipping Buffalo Bills Super Bowl Champion t-shirts to 3rd world countries as a donation. A failed drug is a failed drug.
And along with changing the private sector business model for the drug manufacturers, there would have to be a change in the society to allow for the alternatives. In a free enterprise system, somebody is going to make a profit on new medications that work. Details need to be negotiated, just like details in the tax code.
I strain to understand myself where these companies come up with that price per pill or dose that I’ve seen. Is the manufacturing process that exact? Ingredients that exotic?
These companies need to present the full costs of these things, and maybe we can find out what the issue is and fix it so that people are not paying hundreds for some of this stuff. Some of us are paying a lot out-of-pocket to help our aging parents pay for these things, it would be nice if they toss us a bone here.
Or if they are colluding to fix prices, then they need to have the hammer brought down on them.
The manufacturing process is that exact. Lots of regulations and even minute changes can trigger re-permitting by the FDA.
The FDA is the problem, because they collude with big Pharma in knee-capping competition and they have a revolving door that trades employees. Frankly congress should forbid FDA employees from working for Pharma and vice versa for 5-7 years. That would probably stop most of the collusion just by itself.
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