From the NY Times:
Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.
The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars…
Turing’s price increase is not an isolated example. While most of the attention on pharmaceutical prices has been on new drugs for diseases like cancer, hepatitis C and high cholesterol, there is also growing concern about huge price increases on older drugs, some of them generic, that have long been mainstays of treatment.
I accept that the trademark 'Daraprim' is protected, but surely the patent expired decades ago, so surely everybody else can happily manufacture generic versions and sell them for cost-plus?
Friday, 25 September 2015
What puzzles me is how they can charge $750 for a drug whose patent has expired.
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7 comments:
According to Wikipedia it is cheap everywhere apart from the US so even stranger.
Not strange at all, because a) if you want to make a generic version there a massive regulatory hoops you have to jump through (including doing lots of testing vs the original drug, so you have to buy lots off the current maker), and the sales of it once made will be quite small so the investment isn't worth the return, especially as the current maker can reduce the price at will, as his R&D costs are already sunk, and b) US law specifically prevents a US citizen from buying a drug abroad and importing it for personal use (and commercial imports are equally banned). So no price arbitration is allowed. US pharma companies are allowed to rook their US customers, and they have no recourse, other than to travel abroad for treatment.
@" US law specifically prevents a US citizen from buying a drug abroad and importing it for personal use (and commercial imports are equally banned)."
That explains it, thanks a lot.
S, thanks, that probably explains it, US protectionism.
S. I'd guessed that from what I knew of US protectionism. Especially in healthcare matters. There's also internal protectionism between states and the American Medical Association - the doctors union - is among the worst.
The NHS is a huge asset here - they routinely tell big pharma to hide and go f itself unless they sell their drugs for a price that matches the benefit, I think the term is QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year). Other health authorities then use this price as a starting point in negotiations
This a bit like land rent. Because so much of the market for drugs in the US is insurance companies, it will bear much higher prices than if the market was individuals. What this man has done is no different, really, from someone who rents a council house from the council and sublets it on the open market.
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