In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:
vement, or slight or no

Interestingly enough, at least in the case of Canada, is that generic
prices aren't price controlled and generally higher than the brand name
medications.

Sanity check. Are you saying that generic osteoporosis meds are going to be
more expensive than the brand names in Canada? What I've read implies in
Canada, generics become available 5 years earlier than in the United States
and must be at least 25% less than name brands. I've also read that
prescription drug prices are lower in Canada because drug companies selling
into Canada are not allowed to advertise their products. God only knows how
much the ads we see for Viagra and Lipitor add to their overall price.

Can't say for certain about a specific group, but studies have shown
generics as a group are actually more expensive in The Great White North
than are the (as you noted) heavily regulated patent medicines.


These are not price controls, as you acknowledge by the word "setting." The
government is simply saying: "This is what we are willing to pay if you want
to do business with us." Of course they want to do business with the
largest group of customers in the country. Big Pharma just hates the idea
of not being able to make egregious profits like cell phone companies do on
text messaging or the banks did with overdraft fees and credit transaction
processing fees.
Of course they are price controls. How else would a government
control a price than by setting it? The government is unilaterally
coming in and saying this is the price, take it or leave it. (And in at
least one case early where the company refused to take it, they started
to process to vacate the patent so they could do it themselves. The
company backed down, it would have been interesting to see the outcome).
There is no pretense of negotiation or anything.


Since there's often very little competition for "blockbuster" drugs on
patent, we're stuck dealing with companies who can set almost any price they
choose free of actual competition. The Canadian model just makes them
present accounting data that I am sure Big Pharma would rather keep "company
confidential" because it's bad business for the customer to find out how
badly they're being gouged.
Of course there is competition. Humira, enbrel, etc., all compete for
the same patients. There are many classes 5 classes of antidepressant
medications, all with a few in each group. Patent med compete with older
generics.


The profit motive clashes hard with the basic premise of health care - to
make people well and keep them from getting sick. Sadly, a healthy country
is NOT good for big Pharma. I'm all for the Feds doing drug development
through NIH because of the inherent conflict of "for profit" and "for the
general welfare" of the country's citizens.
And yet there are studies showing no correlation between what
diseases get the money for research from the NIH and number of people
with the disease, amount of money spent on the disease, social impact as
measured by productivity losses or losses in the quality of life, or
even years of life lost. It is rather, who has the better lobbying
effort (and sometimes the best known celeb.)
About the last thing I want in drug development is to pick winners
and losers based on who has the most clout.


You can use tax dollars to fund NIH research and then license manufacturing
of any drugs developed to Big Pharma houses competing for the rights. We do
the same with radio spectrum and with drilling rights, basically. It
wouldn't be hard to bring pharmaceuticals into that same model. The IP
rights, like the country's oil and minerals and the radio spectrum belong to
all Americans. It would drastically decrease the cost of drugs and END the
quest for blockbuster profit centers.

Radio spectrum is another thing altogether since no had the rights
to in the first place. Also, drilling rights are only given by the Feds
on federal lands and along the coast, whcih both US and international
law has long put under the control of governments. If I want to drill
for oil on my land, I can go ahead and do it without asking the feds for
the right to extract MY minerals.

When you tell us that the rich pay more of their income in higher taxes, how
much of the government money that the poor spend go to landlords, doctors,
pharma companies, oil companies, light companies and tons of other
investment vehicles for the very rich? If the system doesn't get
confiscatory at the very end it we may see an economic reaction proceed to a
very bad completion.
A straw man of truly momentous proportions. I have some stock in a
couple of electric utilities. Does that mean I am in the 1%? My next
door neighbor has some appartment complexes, does that make him an evil
economic overlord? At least as the Corp level, most of the landlords and
light companies, etc. are held by institutions such as college
endowments, pension funds, etc.




Thus you see, to use your own example, oil drilling and
exploration go up or down based on the price of oil. WHen it gets more
expensive (outrageous profits) the rigs get going, when it goes down the
drilling does too. Same with most mining operations.

Then let's look at films. Or selling radio spectrum. Much less price
sensitivity there. Films are now mostly financed by limited partnerships
and not by studios exclusively as they were in the 40's. Movie ticket
prices are basically "fixed." How can that happen in a free market? -
Collusion that can't be traced. It's the same reason that all the large
banks are starting to charge fees for debit cards, all the same amount, all
at the same time.
Lots of price sensitivity in films. They are making more money,
but way fewer people are showing up. Just think of the money they'd be
making if they could get that price for the 65% of the American public
that went to see films in the '30s was still going instead of the 22% or
so that are going at least once a week now.
Also explain to me how the same product (a movie) isn't supposed to
cost the same amount at Theatre A then Theatre B? There is nothing about
the theaters that would add or subtract value. The movie is a movie and
thus should cost the same.

Power concentrated in the hands of a small number of huge companies causes
them to operate just like any OPEC-like cartel. The individual investors in
any particular film are quite wide-ranging with some of the money coming
from previous film successes, but with a lot of money coming from elsewhere.
There's no reason Big Pharma can't work that way EXCEPT they are still in
the luxurious position of saying: "why have partners when you can have it
all?"

Find me the first film that costs a billion and 10-15 years to
produce, and I might actually buy this idea.


Congress broke up the studio system. It can break up Big Pharma or the Big
Banks if there's political will. Congress may have failed us in preventing
BoA and others from eating every small bank in sight by not, as you
suggested elsewhere, enforcing anti-trust laws already on the books.
Cite please. All my reading suggests that TV broke up the studio
system.


Are usury laws (basically lobbied out of existence by the big banks)
price-fixing?
Don't see how, since they are taking away the fixed top.

Perhaps there's a compelling social interest in a country not
having its citizens spread-eagled and bung-bunged by companies that are
using monopolistic practices to gouge people. Reviewing is not price
fixing. It's a process whereby a consumer or their representative examines
a non-competitive pricing structure (it does say "Patent Medicine") and
determines whether the prices are so high that the public interest is not
well-served. As much as they may hate it, the drug companies still sell to
Canada and US citizens still go there to get meds cheaper than they can get
in the US. That offends a lot of people. And it should.
Patents, which are specifically enshrined in the Constitution, by
the way. Also unlike a lot of other areas, there is a rather long time
period between the patenting and the ability (if any) to actually make
money that is only partially compensated for by extension of the patent.
Which means that pharm, because of governmental action, has less time to
exploit their patents than others.



If the Feds can run the largest military organization in the world, they're
perfectly capable of hiring everyone and everything they need to extract our
oil for us. Deregulation for some necessities of life has been pretty bad
for the consumer and much better for the stockholder instead of a public
trust. Business has been slowly infiltrating many previously government-run
institutions with less than stellar cost savings or results.

Weren't you one of the people going on about all the money wasted in
Iraq? Most people think military procurement is not exactly, or even
remotely, well done. They do the military part okay, but the business
side is screwed up. Although to be fair a lot of it is imposed by
CongressCritters wanting to use it fatten their pockets and votes.
Nothing to keep them out of pharm development either.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz