Haha, never underestimate the ability of CC’ers to hijack a thread.
Yesterday I went to one of my subscribed threads and just checked the last page. It was like it was an entirely different thread. I had to look back to make sure I’d pulled up the right one!
I think it (jumping from drugs to phones) is because there could be some similarity between these two if we look at it in this way:
We may not need some research (even a legitimate one, instead of a faked one) for a new drug (if doing so would increase the price of the drugs so much that the general population will not benefit from it as they could not afford it anyway.)
We may not need a new model of smartphone so frequently.
We = human beings here.
In other word, the money is spent for a wrong reason (even when the research and the product development actually happen, rather than just some BS from those fat cat CEOs.) BTW, in the hi tech world, a joke that has been talked about among engineers is that, very often, the only “product” that some startups have had is a “story” that a marketing guy and CEO-alike could take to the investment community to try to fool them. The engineers themselves really do not believe it will ever work and think it is just a fabricated “vapor ware”.
The rice in the bag trick?
Each time I dropped it in water, I sucked as much water out from the phone as I could by putting my mouth around the phone by the openings (the headphone one and the charging one) and then put it in the bag of rice. Every time that’s worked for me.
Though if you were swimming with it for several minutes then maybe it’s done. When I’ve dropped it in water it was only in it for a few seconds.
Yeah, I tried the rice thing. I think I was in the water too long.
Note: Daraprim is the brand name for Turing Pharmaceuticals’ pyrimethamine.
LOL! Now we have an answer to the earlier question, ie if the drug is generic why doesn’t another company enter the market and sell it for less.
Here is another article:
good stuff!
“Anti-Capitalism”?
It may not be the for the profit involved (after all, no one did that when the price was $13.50 per pill, much higher than the $0.99 per pill that Imprimis will charge for the custom compound), but for the favorable press that Imprimis is getting against the hedge fund guy.
Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals’ price reduction for Daraprim (pyrimethamine) is 50% for hospitals ($375 per pill) but not for prescriptions filled for patients (either patients or their insurance companies will be paying $750 per pill).
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/11/27/turing-reneges-on-drug-price-cut-rivals-version-sells-well.html
Imprimis has dispensed 2,500 capsules of its compound that includes pyrimethamine and leucovorin for $0.99 each.
Looks like the “Bro” is back in business;
http://news.yahoo.com/turns-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-212841694.html
Chagas disease appears to be mostly found in immigrants from Latin America, many of whom are too poor to afford the proposed price for the drug.
The same drug in many Latin American countries is $60 to $100 for a course of treatment. Medical tourism anyone? Would an insurance company refuse to pay Shrkeli’s price but instead offer the patient a vacation plus treatment in a Latin American country at a lower price?
Shkreli is in trouble:
Karma.
I’m left to wonder if this guy is a sociopath.
The company that sells EpiPens (epinephrine automatic injector commonly used for peanut and other food allergy attacks) seems to have done something similar. A two pack of EpiPens now costs $600. There is a lesser known competitor Adrenaclick that costs $142 for a two pack.
http://www.consumerreports.org/drugs/can-you-get-a-cheaper-epipen/
Ah, but the company selling Epi-pens gives some consumers a coupon so they have NO copay – they’re also on many formularies, making them the preferred Rx for a lot of highly allergic folks.
I used twinject, another epiphedrine injector as my rescue injector once, but they never got on insurer’s formulary, so switched back to Eoi-pen which was on formulary.
It’s disgusting when prices are inflated because the company can charge.
Of course, the cost all comes around. Insurance companies pay, but then who pays the premiums to (government or private) insurance companies? This type of thing is part of why medical care costs keep rising rapidly.
The whole thing is a mess, and it raises real questions, for example, should something as important as medical care be a for profit thing? Capitalism is based on competition, but can there be competition for drugs that have a relatively low user base? More importantly, can you trust medical care done on a low cost basis, if hospitals advertise “Open heart surgery, 5,000 dollars all inclusive”, or “cancer treatment 10,000 dollars”, would you go for it? If you buy a cheap phone or car or tv set and it is a dog, you might be out the cost of it, but how would the low cost operation achieve those low costs? And do we want someone like Shkrelli to be able to in effect shake every last dime out of the pockets of people who rely on a treatment so he can gorge?
Then, too, a lot of the components used in pharmaceuticals are now made offshore, especially India, and there are serious questions about the quality of those components I have been reading, and the FDA has basically left it to the Pharm industry to self certify the components are okay (or at least that is my impression of it). The idea seems to be that the Pharm industry has it in its interest to make sure the quality of the components is good, given fear of lawsuits, but will that actually work?
It becomes further muddled when you have hedge funds and private equity firms getting involved in basic services like this. There was a long article in the NY Times, about how governments have outsourced services like EMT care to firms run by private equity firms and the like, and they have seen the services deteriorate with the mania for lowering costs by those running it. They detailed how, for example, the EMT service when they took people to the hospital often scrounged supplies from the hospital (basically stealing them) to make up for shortfalls they had, and in many of those communities response time has soared and the quality has declined as trained EMT’s walk away, and they leave often minimally qualified and trained people to take their place.
I don’t have any easy answers, but one of the things about the current attempts at reforming medical care is that none of them, from any part, seems to try and address the root causes of the cost of medical care. One way that technologically is getting more and more possible is automated medical care, advances in things like AI and medical scanning and testing could revolutionize medical care, though obviously it will face massive headwinds from doctors. Robotic surgeons could potentially do a better job at surgery with fewer mistakes, robotic GP’s could probably handle a large percentage of routine medical care, but that would obviously threaten doctors and the whole medical training system that is out there. We also should ban the advertising of prescription drugs, I believe the US is only one of two countries that allows that, along with reigning in the ties between the pharm companies and doctors, that ends up driving up medical costs by doctors prescribing expensive new drugs when older , generic drugs work just as well.
People already travel to other countries for medical procedures where the cost of having them in the other countries is affordable to them, but unaffordable to them in the US.
In a few cases, the care may have been better, since the place where the procedure was done at lower cost also had a greater incidence of the medical problem, so that physicians there were more experienced with the procedures. However, most medical tourism is mainly due to price concerns in the US.
“Then, too, a lot of the components used in pharmaceuticals are now made offshore, especially India, and there are serious questions about the quality of those components I have been reading, and the FDA has basically left it to the Pharm industry to self certify the components are okay (or at least that is my impression of it). The idea seems to be that the Pharm industry has it in its interest to make sure the quality of the components is good, given fear of lawsuits, but will that actually work?”
Musicparent, please do not make things up If you are not familiar with the subject. The “self-certification” is based on rigorous, objective analytical testing. It would be ridiculous and super expensive to require every compound going into a very complex, multi-step manufacturing process to be GMP-certified, so only the final steps are done under GMP comditions, but for every material, a CofA is required and kept, and you bet that the FDA is very, very much involved. Ever heard of 483 letters?
And the latest in pharma wars…http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/08/15/489790412/will-your-prescription-meds-be-covered-next-year-better-check
Caremark is our pharmacy. My chemo drug (and all but one of its alternatives) is on this list. The only one they plan to leave on the formulary is a generic to a drug I took for seven years and which lost effectiveness and caused severe side effects. The drug I’m currently on costs about $100k/year (as do all the other CML meds). I have no problem with a higher copay (I am currently paying $1800/year for just this med), but $100k/year is a financial catastrophe for our family.
I suspect Express Scripts and Caremark have publicly thrown down the gantlet to get public outrage worked up to force Big Pharma and insurers to bring down prices and that by the end of the year, they will come to an agreement. In the meantime, we will spend a lot of time researching alternatives and trying to pin down each insurer’s formulary. Problem is that we are otherwise very happy with our insurance and the ability to see excellent docs for my wide variety of medical issues. We still pay a lot out of pocket, but we don’t have to fight to see the specialists of my choice.
And no, we would not qualify for Pharma-sponsored discounts. DH is a federal employee and those discounts don’t apply if you are covered under a government plan. My oncologist has had me in a couple of trials where meds or testing would be discounted/free, but each time I’m rejected from the cost savings because we are using DH’s coverage.