Charlie dealt in pharmaceuticals...
By Libby
Cernig finds the latest story on corporate welfare that relates to this piece I didn't get around to blogging about yesterday. The latter link is from TNR that explodes the myth that the 'free market' pharmaceutical industry is driving innovation in medicines. That is of course a crock. All the pharmas have done in the recent past is slightly alter existing drugs whose patents are about to expire and market them as 'new and improved' products when in fact they often don't work as well as the derivatives that are about to go generic. In truth, it's private researchers in academic settings that drive most of the innovations we benefit from and they're funded by the NIH, which is in turn funded outside of present government health care spending.
As the article Cerning points to notes, the pharma corps do everything possible to keep those generics off the free market and in fact pay off the companies who would market them to withhold the product, something our Congresslizards are actually addressing. There's legislation pending that would ban such manipulations and the pharmas have invested multi-millions in trying to defeat it.
It will be interesting to see where the votes fall on this. I'm betting the politicians will once again vote to protect their deep pocket contributors rather than prevent them from picking our pockets but I would be more than willing to eat those words if only the Congresslizards would for once, prove me wrong.
...He sold those expensive drugs
I gave Charlie all my money
What the hell was I thinking of?
~Warren Zevon
Cernig finds the latest story on corporate welfare that relates to this piece I didn't get around to blogging about yesterday. The latter link is from TNR that explodes the myth that the 'free market' pharmaceutical industry is driving innovation in medicines. That is of course a crock. All the pharmas have done in the recent past is slightly alter existing drugs whose patents are about to expire and market them as 'new and improved' products when in fact they often don't work as well as the derivatives that are about to go generic. In truth, it's private researchers in academic settings that drive most of the innovations we benefit from and they're funded by the NIH, which is in turn funded outside of present government health care spending.
As the article Cerning points to notes, the pharma corps do everything possible to keep those generics off the free market and in fact pay off the companies who would market them to withhold the product, something our Congresslizards are actually addressing. There's legislation pending that would ban such manipulations and the pharmas have invested multi-millions in trying to defeat it.
It will be interesting to see where the votes fall on this. I'm betting the politicians will once again vote to protect their deep pocket contributors rather than prevent them from picking our pockets but I would be more than willing to eat those words if only the Congresslizards would for once, prove me wrong.
Labels: consumer protection, Corporatocracy, economy
posted by Libby Spencer at 2:09 PM
3 Comments:
The Jonathan Cohn article, Creative Destruction (The New Republic) is erudite but missing a few points and lacking in nuance. Before I continue with this comment, allow me this brief digression:
My wife works in this industry. She started as a post-doc (PhD in molecular biology) at the Institute for Basic Research where she received an NIH fellowship grant to study Alzheimer’s disease. Later, she moved into the pharmaceutical industry, specifically the area of new drug development, clinical trials, and FDA submissions.
One problem with public funding for basic research is employee retention. For research scientists in the public sector, hours are long, salaries are meager, and competition for grant money is fierce. My wife, for instance, turned down a position at Harvard University because she was offered compensation below the poverty level. Basic research is not a career but merely a stepping-stone into big pharma where a real living wage can be earned.
In basic research, the timeline to achieve a major breakthrough is a discussion by itself. Measure this timeline, not in years, but in decades or longer. Citing the Jonathan Cohn article, please note that French doctor, Alim-Louis Benabid, first observed the theoretical benefits of Deep Brain Stimulation in 1985. As Cohn notes:
Benabid began experimenting in 1987 with the use of electrodes in Parkinson's patients and, in 1996, published what is now considered the seminal paper demonstrating that DBS can work.
Note the elapsed time from first observation to publication of findings: 11 years. Not to mention the time to license the device, to prepare study applications for regulatory agencies, to select study subjects, to conduct actual clinical trials, and, finally, to submit findings for marketing approval. This process adds another decade on average to the timeline. Total elapsed time: 20 or more years from inception.
Pharmaceutical companies screen thousands of compounds per year in search of a precious few that may have clinical applications. Patents are applied for, not during the clinical phase, but when a compound is first identified. When you deduct the drug development timeline from the actual life of a patent, what remains is a mere 7 years of actual market opportunity.
When you consider a blockbuster drug such as Lipitor can mean, not millions, but billions of dollars in revenue each year, it is easy to understand why these companies leverage every opportunity to protect their franchises.
What can be done to bring down the cost of health care in America? There are numerous opportunities for reform, but it will take a much deeper understanding of underlying issues and a willingness to engage in political horse-trading among the stakeholders.
All well and good SC but it's undeniable that the pharmas are not developing cures, they're developing treatments for the symptoms and they are most definitely gaming the system with the deriatives.
Libby, I am not making excuses for big pharma, but the nuances are important for a complete understanding of the issues.
For some medical conditions where cures are simply unavailable, sometimes the best one can do is alleviate symptoms.
Gaming the system to be sure, but consider the effect on overall prescription costs if drug developers were willing to trade longer patent rights in exchange for lower pricing.
In addition, assuming 50% of the health care insurance burden is tied into administrative costs (i.e. disparate paperwork and procedural requirements among numerous insurers), consider the impact on cost savings if there were standardization requirments under a universal healthcare system.
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