China Negotiating For Cheaper Cancer Drugs (reuters.com) 86
hackingbear writes: "China's medical insurance regulator will begin negotiations with domestic and overseas pharmaceutical companies to lower prices of cancer drugs in a bid to cut the financial burden on patients," reports Reuters. "The State Medical Insurance Administration said it was preparing to include more cancer drugs on its list of medicines eligible for reimbursement, and said 10 foreign and eight domestic pharmaceutical companies had expressed a willingness to work with the authority."
Unlike India, or what we may have been told, China enforces pharmaceutical patents rigorously. Recently, the Chinese box office hit Dying to Survive, which told the real life story of a leukemia patient/businessman put on trial due to smuggling imitation drugs to help fellow patients who cannot pay the exorbitant cost of a drug produced by a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has brought in huge revenues and rave reviews since the movie was released on July 5. Last year, China forced two rounds of NRDL negotiations after seven years of stasis. More than a dozen cancer drugs, including AstraZeneca's Iressa and Roche's Herceptin, are now covered by the country's insurance program, but only after the companies agreed to huge discounts -- a typical move trading lower prices for higher volume. Demand for Herceptin, for example, surged after the discount and triggered a national shortage.
Unlike India, or what we may have been told, China enforces pharmaceutical patents rigorously. Recently, the Chinese box office hit Dying to Survive, which told the real life story of a leukemia patient/businessman put on trial due to smuggling imitation drugs to help fellow patients who cannot pay the exorbitant cost of a drug produced by a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has brought in huge revenues and rave reviews since the movie was released on July 5. Last year, China forced two rounds of NRDL negotiations after seven years of stasis. More than a dozen cancer drugs, including AstraZeneca's Iressa and Roche's Herceptin, are now covered by the country's insurance program, but only after the companies agreed to huge discounts -- a typical move trading lower prices for higher volume. Demand for Herceptin, for example, surged after the discount and triggered a national shortage.
cost in America will go up to cover this (Score:3)
cost in America will go up to cover this.
But you can order from Canadian places for a lot less.
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No, they'll go up because they can simply raise the prices because the US hasn't figured this out yet.
Re:cost in America will go up to cover this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:cost in America will go up to cover this (Score:4)
Let's be more clear. The government CHOOSES not to. There is nothing that fundamentally stops it, just a bit of legislation that could be reversed quickly if the legislature ever decided to put the general welfare ahead of infinite profits for the few.
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It shouldn't go without saying. Don't let them sweep this under the carpet with their cries of "we CAN'T". They can and they know it. The sooner the general public internalizes that, the sooner the bums can be kicked out via soap, ballot, or ammo box.
You can't order from Canada (Score:3)
I've got friends and family who have long term illnesses in America and have spent their entire lives struggli
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If they don't agree to the discount and a competitor does, then they won't be selling any or making any money anyway. Aren't capitalism and free markets great.
Just because you shoot yourselves in the foot and don't try to negotia
Australia (Score:5, Informative)
This is how Australia does it.
The PBS - Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - provides heavily subsidised prescription meds to any with a script from a Doctor (and super cheap for certain categories like Age Pensioners, disabled etc).
The catch is, pharmaceutical companies have to try and get their drugs on the PBS, and to do that they have to offer up evidence that their drug is better than those currently on the PBS, and quantify the extra benefit. For some drugs (like psychiatric meds), just show ANY benefit over placebo is a huge hurdle. Then quantifying the benefit to tax payers to justify what gets paid per pill.
Sometimes it limits the quick adoption of new drugs (although there are other paths for experimental treatments), but the main thing it provides is a science based monopoly buyer. The drug companies don't get to artificially court demand, and extract super high margins without showing they're worth it.
Oh, and it is illegal to advertise prescription meds in Australia. None of these ads full of older gents "Talk to your Doctor today about Cialis."
The system is very effective.
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Re: Australia (Score:2, Insightful)
Same in the UK. This is how national health services are supposed to work. Leave it to corporations and consumer choice? You get the USA's hyper-exploitative system where patients are stuffed full of questionable drugs, many of which they probably don't even need.
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Yes, about that choice...No we do not have choice or a free market here in the US. The sheep are a captive audience exploited by the congress. Our representatives actively work against our benefit. So please, stop with this free market choice lies.
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Well from what we've all seen over here, your health industry will be conforming with that of Russia's within a year or so.
Congratulations on not electing someone semi-intelligent.
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Filter error: You can type more than that for your (Score:2)
Look, I get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that finding, testing and indeed certifying new drugs is costly. I have worked in the certification world for 15 years.
I also understand that a company needs to make a profit.
Having said that, a drug company is not the same as a company like Apple or Samsung or Volkswagen.
You can live without your iphone, so if you cannot afford the 1k price of an iphone..well...don't buy it.
Can you do the same with that Hep-C cure? With AIDS drugs? No, you need them to survive. You will literally die if you do not get them. So, as we have seen many, many times over the years, old drug patents are purchased by third parties and the price is increased by, often times, more than 1000%.
Or a super computer has slightly varied and already existing drug and a slight improvement is seen for MS patients. So, these are sold for $3000 per treatment.
This is literally holding the public hostage.
Sure, the assholes may argue... you can choose not to take it. Let us see your opinion when your little girls gets cancer (god forbid it) and you choose not to pay the 25000$ treatment because it's not fully covered by the insurance.
In my opinion, it is fucking disgusting that this is allowed to happen. Utterly fucking disgusting. I would argue that anyone who thinks it is reasonable that drug companies should be able to charge whatever they like for literally life saving drugs, then you sir, are a complete and total sack of shit and the reason why we cannot have nice things. So, go fuck yourself.
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And the counterpoint...
So, how do you convince a drug company to spend the (sometimes) billions to develop a new drug if they're never going to sell enough of it to recover the billions?
I suppose you can have the government do all drug development/testing. But that just means raising taxes to pay for the development of new drugs.
Which means the drugs will STILL cost as much as the old way, but you won't see the costs on your doctor bill, you'll see them hidden on your tax bill....
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Yes. The US performs 42% of the world's drug research. If we put price controls in, all of the governments around the world would have to raise prices or remove drugs from their benefits plan. While the article below ignores the claim of "free riding" by other government, it later proves that without using that particular phrase.
http://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/369727-us-drug-prices-higher-than-in-the-rest-of-the-world-heres-why
They ARENT spending much on research! (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a blatant lie.
Look at their numbers. Nearly all is marketing, lobbyism and sales.
Pretty much all drugs come from them taking some thing they found in nature (e.g. my blood medication, wich is one of the most popular in the world, literally came from a snake poison suggested by a shaman),
and then cluelessly tinkering with it, to see what the modified variants will do.
A researcher for a big pharma company admitted that they really have no idea what they are doing, in an AMA in Reddit, a few years ago.
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Look at their numbers. Nearly all is marketing, lobbyism and sales.
Nope. A lot of a pharma's budget is that, but unless you market, you don't sell. If you don't sell, you don't fund R&D. It's a balance.
Pretty much all drugs come from them taking some thing they found in nature (e.g. my blood medication, wich is one of the most popular in the world, literally came from a snake poison suggested by a shaman), and then cluelessly tinkering with it, to see what the modified variants will do.
Nope. Some drugs come from modification of natural products. Some are new structures. They tinker, but the chemists are not clueless. .
A researcher for a big pharma company admitted that they really have no idea what they are doing
Nope. Researchers have an idea of what they are doing. It just turns out that human biochemistry is really really complex. .
What I am not fine with, is them claiming it is soo hard, and soo valuable..
But it is hard. And modern pharmaceuticals are valuable. Stop taking them if you want.
Re:They ARENT spending much on research! (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need to market drugs if you're planning on selling to national health services. You bring your drugs to them, show them how good they are, and if they're better than the current drugs, they'll be bought in bulk, covering your costs. You only need to market drugs which don't sell themselves, or if you're marketing to people who don't care about efficacy (like to end-patients on TV in the US and NZ), or buying off doctors (US).
Re: They ARENT spending much on research! (Score:2)
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Wait a second. You are saying that the result of research is being sold as result of ... marketing? Like ... not because - this may seem outragous to you, but - because the patients need it?
Or the patients would not know about the drug that can help them if it was not for the marketing? Isn't it doct
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Pretty much all drugs come from them taking some thing they found in nature (e.g. my blood medication, wich is one of the most popular in the world, literally came from a snake poison suggested by a shaman), and then cluelessly tinkering with it, to see what the modified variants will do.
If that's all it takes, then how come YOU are not doing the same thing and making billions?
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because the drug makers have the patents to protect them.
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That doesn't stop you from developing something that isn't already patented.
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And the counterpoint...
So, how do you convince a drug company to spend the (sometimes) billions to develop a new drug if they're never going to sell enough of it to recover the billions?
Well, I would first require a detailed audit of that billion-dollar price tag. After getting rid of 70% of the wasted overhead, the cost would likely drop considerably. Or you would pressure companies into reducing the cost by 70%, as I would imagine they would do anything to avoid an audit that would reveal how much excess there is in that R&D price tag.
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After getting rid of 70% of the wasted overhead, the cost would likely drop considerably.
Please explain where this magic 70% is being wasted in R&D.
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well first off a lot of drug companies tinker with existing drugs just so they can do a patent refresh so thats a lot of wasted effort.
What i would like to see is a lockout of patents on drugs unless they can be proven to be NEW
1 same active ingredient but fewer side effects (minor edits allowed)
2 more effective delivery method (or less invasive ie convert shot to pill)
3 cures/ treats disease that had nothing
4 combines different drugs used together when they could not be taken at the same time
5 replaces a n
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I would argue that anyone who thinks it is reasonable that drug companies should be able to charge whatever they like for literally life saving drugs, then you sir, are a complete and total sack of shit and the reason why we cannot have nice things. So, go fuck yourself.
You claim to "get it", but I wonder if you really do because of who you are looking to blame. You may not like my answer here, but allow me to clarify.
We've carved up this planet into countries. Countries with borders identifying what is ours, and what is theirs. Resource management is a critical function of any government due to a finite amount of resources being consumed by a pool of citizens that grows larger every year. Part of resource management is creating polices that essentially ensure death, b
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I understand that finding, testing and indeed certifying new drugs is costly. I have worked in the certification world for 15 years.
[people have to chose between paying the exorbitant prices gouged by drug companies to pay for developing new drugs, or dying.]
In my opinion, it is fucking disgusting that this is allowed to happen.
Most of that cost is getting the drug through regulatory red tape before it can be sold. Ask Google about time and you get a link to a (2014) article saying that the whole process t
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And if a company looks at the situation and decides to NOT bother investing in a new drug that solves XYZ problem, and therefore NOBODY gets access to that drug. That's helpful? Fuck that.
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Pharmaceutical companies already do that: they invest much more in baldness treatments than in malaria drugs.
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Sure. But it's not because the government is limiting the opportunity. Big difference.
Single payer (Score:4, Insightful)
A Cure for their own Poison? (Score:2)
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See the book "China RX" - nearly everything is made overseas. AFAIK there is not even a penicillin production facility in the US.
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