Thread: Pharmaceutical Companies

Pill pushers the lot of them. They know no different of course and think they are doing the right thing.

How many of the people on here are, or know people, who have been pescribed something, and they something else to counter the effects of that pill, and something else to counter the side effects of that pill... and on and on. I can think of quite a few off the top of my head.

Modern medicine does not want to CURE people. They only want to treat symptoms with pills from Big Phrama.

Jet, you seem to have some health care knowledge. Much of what you say is true and well explained and being a retired pharmacist, I agree with it.

My personal take is that physicians are the big culprits by always wanting the newest drugs on the market rather than using older drugs that take care of the same issues and symptoms. Generic companies do not have to pay for developement of the drug, or R&D, as the drug companies call it. Once the initial patent runs out on the developed drug, any company can copy the it and sell their product for a fraction of the cost. I highly recommend buying generics of proven medications rather than allowing physicians to write for newer, more expensive products. It is the physicians that drive the ship, but if everyone did some homework, they could ask for alternatives.

The majority of problems I have encountered ,in my 34 year career, was with newer, less proven, medications. Many, many drugs are pulled,off the market shortly after their release due to major side effects or even death. We have seen many mentioned in law suits. This is because physicians do not allow time for a new product to build a track record. They want the newest and unfortunately, the most expensive medications for their patients. Retraining the physicians to accept older medications rather than listening to all the drug reps out there would go a long way to reduce drug costs.

I do not know about other countries, but in the US, drug companies can no longer offer kickback, gifts, trips, perks or any other incentives to physicians or Directors of Phamacy to purchase only their products. In the old days, things were pretty wide open and a lot of back door deals were made to assure a drug company gets market share. No more, and the big drug budgets are now also gone, so it has been difficult for the drug reps to invade hospitals. I used to have written policies that banned all drug reps from entering the hospital. They could, however, go to doctor's offices to spread their propaganda.

Yes, be careful when buying cheap drugs in Thailand. I buy them, but limit it to non lifesaving drugs. As Jet already mentioned, one cannot be sure about their efficacy (potency) and could even be counterfeits. It is buyer beware. We used to send all out outdated drugs to third world countries, of which Thailand is one, and they can change the expiration date to whatever they want.

MD's are part of the problem too (my sister is one). The pharma companies offer them greater inducements to prescribe the 'latest and greatest' drugs- which, whatever their efficacy, means the most expensive and profitable for the pharma company and it's salesmen. The whole system sucks.

Sabang, in what country is you sister a physician?

Originally Posted by rickschoppers

Jet, you seem to have some health care knowledge.

That post dates to 2008. Jet was jailed and flounced many years ago. I doubt she will be responding to your post.

^^ Australia, Rick. Most aussies are quite happy with their healthcare system (as opposed to, say, the USA)- but that isn't to say it couldn't be significantly improved, and deliver more for less.

Round of applause for the good guys.

Imprimis Pharmaceuticals to Make Compounded and Customizable Formulation of Pyrimethamine and Leucovorin Available for Physicians to Prescribe for their Patients as an Alternative to Daraprim®

Imprimis forms Imprimis Cares to help combat the high prices of sole source legacy generic drugs
Oct 22, 2015

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMMY), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of proprietary compounded drug therapies, today announced it has made available a customizable compounded formulation of pyrimethamine and leucovorin available for physicians to consider prescribing for their patients as a low cost alternative to Daraprim®.

Imprimis Pharmaceuticals Logo
Last month, Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, the sole supplier of Daraprim, increased the price of this prescription drug from $13.50 per tablet to a reported $750.00 per tablet. The FDA-approved label for Daraprim indicates that it is prescribed for toxoplasmosis and other types of infections. Toxoplasmosis can be of major concern for patients with weakened immune systems such as patients with HIV/AIDS, pregnant women and children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pyrimethamine works to block folic acid synthesis in the parasite T. gondii, the cause of toxoplasmosis, and leucovorin helps to reverse the negative effects on bone marrow caused by this mechanism of action.

Imprimis is now offering customizable compounded formulations of pyrimethamine and leucovorin in oral capsules starting as low as $99.00 for a 100 count bottle, or at a cost of under a dollar per capsule. Compounded medications may be appropriate for prescription when a commercially-available medicine does not meet the specific needs of a patient. For ordering information, please visit Imprimis Cares!.

Mark L. Baum, CEO of Imprimis stated, "It is indisputable that generic drug prices have soared recently. While we have seen an increase in costs associated with regulatory compliance, recent generic drug price increases have made us concerned and caused us to take positive action to address an opportunity to help a needy patient population. While we respect Turing's right to charge patients and insurance companies whatever it believes is appropriate, there may be more cost-effective compounded options for medications, such as Daraprim, for patients, physicians, insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers to consider. This is not the first time a sole supply generic drug – especially one that has been approved for use as long as Daraprim – has had its price increased suddenly and to a level that may make it unaffordable. In response to this recent case and others that we will soon identify, Imprimis is forming a new program called Imprimis Cares which is aligned to our corporate mission of making novel and customizable medicines available to physicians and patients today at accessible prices."

Mr. Baum added, "Today, some drug prices are simply out of control and we believe we may be able to help control costs by offering compounded alternatives to several sole source legacy generic drugs. Imprimis Cares and its team of compounding pharmacists will work with physicians and their patients to ensure they have affordable access to the medicines they need from the over 7,800 generic FDA-approved drugs. Imprimis Cares, available in all 50 states, will work with all third party insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and buying groups to offer its patient specific customizable compounded drug formulations at prices that ensure accessibility and that provide a reasonable profit for Imprimis. We are here to serve our patients and their physicians. We believe that when we do a great job serving our customers, our shareholders will also benefit."

Imprimis' finished compounded drug formulations do not have an FDA-approval label for recommended use. Imprimis compounded formulations are not FDA approved and may only be prescribed pursuant to a physician prescription for an individually identified patient consistent with federal and state laws governing compounded drug formulations.

Daraprim® is a registered trademark of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC. Imprimis is not affiliated with Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC nor Daraprim®. Daraprim® is an FDA-approved drug. Please consult with your physician regarding which prescription options are most suitable for your specific needs.

ABOUT IMPRIMIS PHARMACEUTICALS

San Diego-based Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMMY) is a national leader in the development, production and dispensing of novel compounded pharmaceuticals. The company's business primarily consists of four therapeutic segments including ophthalmology, urology, sinus and integrative medicine. Imprimis dispenses compounded pharmaceuticals in all 50 states from four facilities located in California, Texas, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For more information about Imprimis, please visit the corporate website at Imprimis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: IMMY) is a pharmaceutical company dedicated to delivering high quality and innovative medicines to physicians and patients at affordable prices..

SAFE HARBOR

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements in this release that are not historical facts may be considered such "forward looking statements." Forward looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause results to differ materially and adversely from the statements contained herein. Some of the potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those predicted include risks and uncertainties related to Imprimis' ability to make commercially available its compounded formulations and technologies in a timely manner or at all; physician interest in prescribing its formulations; risks related to its compounding pharmacy operations; its ability to enter into other strategic alliances, including arrangements with pharmacies, physicians and healthcare organizations for the development and distribution of its formulations; its ability to obtain intellectual property protection for its assets; its ability to accurately estimate its expenses and cash burn, and raise additional funds when necessary; risks related to research and development activities; the projected size of the potential market for its technologies and formulations; unexpected new data, safety and technical issues; regulatory and market developments impacting compounding pharmacies, outsourcing facilities and the pharmaceutical industry; competition; and market conditions. These and additional risks and uncertainties are more fully described in Imprimis' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Such documents may be read free of charge on the SEC's web site at U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission | Homepage. Undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. Except as required by law, Imprimis undertakes no obligation to update any forward looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances after the date they are made, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Sabang, so in Australia the drug companies can still bribe physicians to use their products which does not bode well for consumers.

Maybe Australia needs to push for not bribing doctors, or at least minimalize it no matter how much they like the health care system.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Originally Posted by rickschoppers

Jet, you seem to have some health care knowledge.

That post dates to 2008. Jet was jailed and flounced many years ago. I doubt she will be responding to your post.

I wasn't really looking for a response and only making a statement that they know more about the pharmaceutical business than the average bear.

It sure would be nice to have all health care paid for. The US really missed the boat on that one and it could have been, along with free education, if the government's proritites had been different. Now, many Americans understand this and are demanding things change, but I am afraid it will not happen in my lifetime.

If the US really wants change, they need to elect Trump as a start. All the rest of the canidates wiĺl result in a status quo situation IMO.

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by rickschoppers

My personal take is that physicians are the big culprits by always wanting the newest drugs on the market rather than using older drugs that take care of the same issues and symptoms.

Interesting, but in all my years working in the medical arena I have never heard the theory that doctors were responsible for the high cost of parmaceuticals. It seems pretty well established that pharma push new drugs that are often not needed because other drugs out there already do the job quite well. And, of course, they want to make a lot of money from people.
Notorious gougers all, IMHO. A quick google of the topic reveals a wealth of info from reputable sources.
Here's a good start.

Amgen's Repatha sheds light on the high cost of drugs in the U.S.
By Steven Ross Johnson | September 2, 2015

The launch of Amgen's new cholesterol-lowering drug Repatha is renewing the debate over the cost of drugs and the reasons why prices are so much higher in the U.S. than in other advanced countries.

In the U.S., Amgen will sell Repatha at more than $14,000 for a year's supply.

An Amgen spokeswoman said the listed price for the same drug and same dosage will total $6,249 annually in Britain.

In Austria, an annual supply costs around $7,619, while in Finland the price is $8,175.

Prices across all European countries have yet to be finalized, she noted. But the prices reflect "the unique healthcare environment and marketplace of a specific country or region," she said.

That's leading many observers to question what exactly causes the U.S. market to support the world's highest prescription drug prices.

The drug industry's leading trade organization, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, noted in a blog post in April that stated such claims are often exaggerated and often only focused on the list price.

The organization claims that what's often ignored is the fact that private insurers, Medicaid programs and pharmacy benefit managers negotiate prices that are lower than the published retail price.

But even taking that into consideration, the U.S. pays a high price for pharmaceuticals compared to the rest of the world. According to a research brief released in May by the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, the U.S. spends more on prescription drugs than any other nation in the developed world, accounting for 12% of total health spending.

The report found the U.S. spent $1,010 per capita on pharmaceuticals in 2014, while per capita spending of the next highest country, Germany, was $668.

“In the U.S., we have many purchasers trying to buy products from the drug companies and in most of the other countries they have only one purchaser and that's the government,” said Gerard Anderson, professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Unlike in the U.S., many foreign countries regulate drug prices, setting limits on the amount they pay for medications, thus giving them more leverage when negotiating.

U.S. payers on the other hand, often accept a higher price set by the drugmakers, which they can in turn offset with higher co-pays to patients.

Anderson said other countries benefit from the prices paid for drugs in the U.S., estimating as much as 50% of drug profits come from sales in the U.S.

“We are essentially subsidizing the world's research and development in pharmaceuticals,” Anderson said. “I'm not sure why we need to subsidize Germany or Japan, but we do.”

The National Health Service in the United Kingdom, an agency under the government's single-payer system, regularly assesses the cost of drugs provided to residents and uses incentives to keep prices down.

The pharmaceutical industry argues the price of breakthrough medications like Repatha reflects both research and development costs and the overall value the products offer patients in terms of improved health outcomes.

An analysis released last November by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimated the average cost to develop a medication that's ultimately approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as about $2.6 billion.

But a New England Journal of Medicine article published last May argued the average drug development cost was lower than the Tufts estimate because of the large public contribution that the government and academic research institutions make in the development of innovative therapies like Gilead Sciences' hepatitis C drug Sovaldi.

“Of course, it is extremely expensive and risky to develop a new medication, and inevitably many promising new treatments will fail before they can be marketed,” wrote author Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. And drug companies have to make up this cost elsewhere.

[B]“But as risky as drug development is, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries remain among the most profitable sectors of the U.S. economy and actually spend only a small fraction of their revenues on truly innovative research,” Avorn added.

[/B]Anderson estimated companies invested up to 15% of their profits toward research and development of new drugs while devoting as much as 25% to marketing.

“When we pay the higher price, we pay for a lot more marketing,” Anderson said. “We don't get a lot more research and development.”

Both Repatha and the recently approved medication Praluent from Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals belong to a new class of cholesterol-fighting drugs known as PCSK9 inhibitors. Such drugs—viewed by many as the first real alternative to statin drugs—can lower levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol by as much as 75% when used alongside older statins.

But the approvals of Praluent and Repatha have raised questions about their cost effectiveness. A February article in Health Affairs estimated the long-term use of PCSK9 inhibitors could set the price for treatment with such drugs significantly higher than that of Sovaldi's initial price of $84,000. Unlike that medication, where a typical treatment regimen lasts 12 weeks, PCSK9 drugs could be taken for years to manage high cholesterol.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/arti...NEWS/150909996

Mr.G, I don't believe I said physicians were responsible for the high cost of drugs. What I said is that they are directly responsible for writing prescriptions for new drugs that cost much more than generics that essentially have the same outcome.

There is no doubt that drug companies overcharge the public for brand name medications when generics are available that may have the same outcome. Only in the case of "breakthrough" drugs that have no alternatives, does using the newer medication make sense. What does not make sense is the cost of these new drugs. Yes, they do have to recover all the R&D costs, but they typically recover much more than that which rolls into the company profits.

Physicians are puppets of the drug companies and believe all that the drug reps tell them. They all want the newest drug out there and have no regard for the cost. I have met a few physicians such as Infectious Disease doctors that will use the less expensive anti-infectives, but they are a rarity. Most doctors will not research the less expensive generics and are just sheeple when it comes to following the drug reps propaganda. This is how physicians drive up health care costs. I spent much of my career counter detailing doctors with regard to new medications and they are a stubborn lot.

Many health insurance companies now require generic use when available. The doctors hate it since they see it as insurance companies telling them how to practice. Physicians just need to learn more about drugs rather than listening to all the pony shows the drug reps put on.

High drug costs start with changing the physician's prescription writing habits and then restricting drug profits of the drug companies would help as well.

One of the serious implications of TTIP and TPP is that the Big Pharma giants will destroy 3rd world (or countries that currently allow generic medicines) reasonably priced medicines for their population. The iron grip of these companies will see people dying and living in agony with diseases because they can not afford the full priced big pharma versions. It will cripple the health care services in all poorer states such as Thailand

Fair play to Bernie
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/pol...CQN/story.html

Shame that brand Obomba and Brand Hitlery are all for it, with their pockets stuffed full of big pharma money
https://www.opensecrets.org/industri...A&mem=Y&page=1

and the clinton foundation has Big Pharma chucking money at her.

So anyway, fear not my little head in the sand friends. Nothing will get better, everything will get worse, and when you pop down to the pharmacy in Nakhon Suckon or where ever for something that today costs you 100 baht a box and are confronted with a bill for 15,000 baht, remember why that happened, the politicians and media that were pushing for it. and the complete lack of interest you showed in it right up until the point that you had to chose between your blood pressure pills and paying your rent.

Pseudo, I am not convinced what you are saying will really happen. Neither Mexico or Canada have drug costs as high as the US and I do not think they ever will. They would be a good barometer for what you suggest due to their proximity to the US. They would be the first to experience dramatic increases, and if that happened, I would be more concerned.

Even though drug companies have some power, they do not have enough power to impose unrealistic drug costs in third world countries.

Will Trump take on Big Pharma and hold them accountable?

I hope so.


Drug Stocks Plunge as Trump Threatens to Force Price Bidding
by Zachary Tracer and Anna Edney

January 11, 2017, 11:30 PM GMT+7 January 12, 2017
‘We’re going to save billions,’ Trump says of proposed change


Pharmaceutical and biotech stocks plummeted after President-elect Donald Trump said he’d force the industry to bid for government business, a position that aligns him with congressional Democrats and against the powerful drug-manufacturing lobby.

“They’re getting away with murder,” Trump said at a press conference in New York. “Pharma has a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there is very little bidding. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don’t bid properly and we’re going to save billions of dollars.”

The industry is the latest target of a president who’s made a habit of negotiating via Twitter. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index fell 3 percent in New York, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology & Life Sciences Index dropped 1.7 percent, the biggest one-day drops for the indexes since October.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-price-bidding

Trumps war on Drugs barons, how will it end?

Originally Posted by wasabi

Trumps war on Drugs barons, how will it end?

Probably not the way big pharma wants..

I'm hoping Trump will notice the trillion dollars failure: the DEA.

It is largely big pharma who lobbies against any changes in federal war on drugs policy, which is clearly a monstrous social catastrophy.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

President-elect Donald Trump said he’d force the industry to bid for government business

I would sure like to see that. One big plus for Trump if he can make that happen!

I would like to see Trump take on the health insurance companies since I truly believe they ruined health care in the US. They have too much power when it comes to driving hospitals and physicians to practice medicine according to what the company's want instead of what is best for the patient.

How Americans take medications also needs to be changed. Far too many medication prescriptions written by physicians who want the patient to keep coming back. Just another example of how insurance companies have driven treatment in the US. A pill for everything is now the norm.

^ Healthcare for profit is morally wrong and it perverts/discourages true preventative medicine. It won't happen under this president but America needs single payer.