If his scum of humanity is an act, he should have dropped a long time ago. I don’t care how many cats he adopted. He put people’s lives in jeopardy, was an arrogant and snotty little punk to the entire process of that case, and it just makes me mad he is going to jail for defrauding investors and not all the other stuff.
This, so much. I’m happy to see his life ruined, but I wish it had been done in the service of saying, “Exploiting the sick is wrong.”
Do we have a general healthcare in the US thread? Because this:
One of those things that many, myself included, have accused of being a problem. Laid bare here. I mean can there possibly be a clearer example of how healthcare being a pure free market system is not in the best interests of everyone?
That’s why vaccInes being a corporate conspiracy are bullshit. They want to sell you a pill you have to take daily the rest of your life. A vaccine is one shot that can last a lifetime, and it prolongs said life. Which is worth more to a shareholder?
Our pro-corporate courts in another victory for freedom:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/health/acthar-mallinckrodt-medicare-claims-doctor-payments/index.html
More than 80% of doctors who filed Medicare claims in 2016 for H.P. Acthar Gel – a drug best known for treating a rare infant seizure disorder – received money or other perks from the drugmakers, according to a CNN analysis of publicly identified prescribers.
The analysis, which looked at doctors who filed more than 10 Part D claims, found that the drugmakers – Mallinckrodt and Questcor – paid 288 prescribers more than $6.5 million for consulting, promotional speaking and other Acthar-related services between 2013 and 2016. Mallinckrodt purchased Questcor in 2014.
At about the same time, Medicare spending on Acthar rose dramatically – more than tenfold over six years.
This is that doctor that kneeled in solidarity with the NFL people right? He got shitcanned a couple of months ago. The hospital decided not to renew his surgery residence-ship.
What boggles the mind is I think I read this drug has been out since the 1930s.
It’s insane that the price of these drugs are increasing like this when they should become cheaper, get generics and all that jazz.
The reply from the drug companies is very much like the Hillary, but her emails shit. In this case the reply is, do you know how much it cost to create this drug? Research isn’t free. And such bullshit.
What angers me so much is most of their research is paid for by public tax dollars via University, NIH, and NSF.
And this specific drug, not new. They might have bore some cost acquiring it but the decades of mark-ups on it are ridiculous. I absolutely abhor the focus on out of pocket. The insurances paying for these are spreading those costs to… everyone.
The most recent episode of 99% Invisible is very frustrating. It’s about the Orphan Drug Act, and how it incentivised a company to bring a drug to market for hereditary angioedema, but only at crazy expensive price. The show mentions in passing that that company in question didn’t actually invent the drug at all.
Wait, that seems pretty important to the story, no? Wouldn’t it be interesting to know how had it been developed and used for 30 years in Europe, without an Orphan Drug Act?
Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry, it really is all about money. When you have drugs that treat really specific rare diseases that are already cheap, there is no incentive to create a “generic” brand.
When you create a new drug, you have 20 years of exclusivity as a name brand, that is where you make back your research costs, which can be great, depending on the drug. After 20 years, companies can apply for generic status, and with most popular new drugs, there are tons of smaller pharma companies jumping at the chance for a piece of the action.
But for really niche drugs with low sales, there isn’t much incentive to make a generic, especially because once the drug companies have made their money, they will lower the costs, or sell the formula to a smaller company that, as we have seen, jacks up the price so that they can make that sweet insurance cash to fund their own R&D costs.
It is an awful cycle, but one that has been happening again and again. Our FDA does a damn fine job protecting us from bad actors, we do a pretty great job of making sure the drugs that come to market are safe. Some, in the industry, would argue the FDA does a bit too good of a job, and you have generics that could lower costs sitting for decades unapproved due to some impossible standards for approval.
But you know, regulations would ruin everything right? So we can do that. Fixing this is as simple as saying when a company sells their formula to someone else, they cannot raise the price more than X%. This might make it difficult for small R&D firms that get money for research this way, but we just can’t let things operate that way, it is harmful to consumers.
And yet it was available in Europe. Would have been nice for the show to explore why.
Europe has had issues with drugs in the past that were not released in the USA… like an entire generation of deformities. The FDA isn’t perfect either, so we just need some flexibility it seems but not a throw open the gates approach. I have been told it is not a cheap process to go through the FDA process, even if the product is known and used elsewhere. With that low volume, it really does take some sort of financial incentive for someone to do it, but there should be away to avoid the crazy expensive part on the other end.