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Nonprofit Working to Block Drug Imports Has Ties to Pharma Lobby

237 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
refurb 10y ago
A bill cosponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would provide a mechanism for Canadian drug manufacturers to sell to U.S. consumers and pharmacies. They do realize that for branded drugs, the "Canadian drug manufacturer" is the same as the US drug manufacturer, right?
- dublinben 10y ago
  People looking to save money aren't buying branded drugs, they're buying generics. Which are still far too expensive in the US, compared to other OECD markets.
  - refurb 10y ago
    The US, with a few exceptions, actually has lower priced generic drugs than other countries, including the EU.[1] Interestingly, the study also shows that the U.S. has one of the highest levels of generic drug use relative to total prescription volume, and that generic prices are lower in the U.S. than in all the countries except Canada, where the difference is 6%. [1]http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/analyzing-brand-name-and-generic-drug-costs-in-the-u-s-and-eight-other-countries/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/analyzing-brand-n...
- fencepost 10y ago
  The manufacturer is the same, but manufacturers rarely sell directly to consumers. They sell to pharmacies, and medications at Canadian pharmacies are (surprise) generally priced based on whatever price controls and negotiated rates apply to Canadians. When those rates are 1/10th of the USA cost for the same drug from the same factory the same lot number, either someone's getting the drugs at less than cost or someone else is getting screwed on price. Or put differently, "Why does the USA fund so much of basic drug research and drug company profits daddy?" "Regulatory capture and bought politicians, son."
tomkinstinch 10y ago
The price differences between domestic and international medicines can be truly outrageous. I just got back from a work trip to a hospital in Sierra Leone, where the anthelmintic medicine Albendazole costs the equivalent of $1 USD at a private pharmacy (or even less if you don't care about packaging). The same treatment in the US (a single dose) cost me $430 USD (before insurance). This medicine is out of patent; the R&D costs have been recovered. There's no reason for it to cost as much as is does in the US, apart from greed. It's more of a niche drug in the US than it is in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is shelf stable unlike say the antibodies of an immunotherapy, or the rabies vaccine, so it's not perishable. I trust the purity of the US version more than the version sold internationally, but that is probably an irrational fear. Even with added costs of laboratory purity testing and import tariffs, those in the US would still be better off if we could import drugs from overseas. Some medicines are expensive for a reason: they're new and need to have R&D (and FDA) costs recovered (this is why we have patents), they have niche use and are produced in small quantities (cancer immunotherapies), they're perishable (biologicals), or all three. Many others are expensive because we have no regulatory protections against price gouging. Epi-Pens are another example. A 1mL vial of epinephrine costs ~$5, and the syringe to inject it costs pennies. Auto-injectors add some value, but not the $700 Mylan charges. They're fundamentally a pre-filled syringe a spring, and an injection molded case. I wonder what the system would look like if we granted longer pharmaceutical patents (say, 30 years), with the change that upon expiration of the patents medicines would be produced by the government and sold at cost (or provided for free).
- HarryHirsch 10y ago
  You'd expect just that to happen. The domestic market for human-rated albendazole is so small that it will sustain just one manufacturer, it's effectively a monopoly, and the monopolist can set prices to whatever he wants. We know what to do in such a situation (turn the monopolist into a regulated utility), but the current political climate won't permit this action. See the vet, get fenbendazole for huge dogs.
  - devoply 10y ago
    This sort of rhetoric might work, but it doesn't in the face of Indian manufacturers who can easily be certified who will produce it for $1 and ship it to you the next day for $1 more. It's simply regulatory capture and a way of printing free money for people who already have money so they can rob the masses who don't. It's a scam, and it's stupid that we fall for it. The rich do get richer, and not for any other reason then they have money to affect regulatory capture. Generics should be nearly free. There is no reason for anyone to be making such large sized gains on generics.
panzagl 10y ago
Remember nonprofit is a tax status, not an indicator of morality.
- twothamendment 10y ago
  So very true. Nonprofit does not mean they don't have an agenda, backer, motive or some reason to be "fair" when looking at an issue.
niftich 10y ago
This is such an oblique position for legitimately grassroots activism to take. I mean, it's not like people are dropping dead en masse in Canada, out of all places, from taking supposedly sketchy, industrially-produced medication. Meanwhile, importing copycat generics from India is fine [1] (taken from an article with an obvious slant against Walmart, one major importer of such medications). On the regulatory front, the difference is that India lets the US FDA work there and inspect plants that export to the US [2], while Canada doesn't, and although the US and Canada have been slowly easing into formally trusting the other's regulatory frameworks [3] by working up from food safety [4], they are not quite there on the medical front. How much of this is legitimately grounded in science, logistics, diplomacy, and protectionism are up for debate. This is good investigative journalism. It certainly raises some additional questions that would have been difficult for an average person to learn on their own -- including questions about this nonprofit, about whether both parties' past attempts to allow Canadian drug imports have been comparable or different, about whether an organic movement concerned about drug safety exists at all, about the author's motivations for writing this piece; all good questions worthy of more research and conversation. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/india-wal-marts-drug-conn_b_108466.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/india-wal-marts-drug... [2] https://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm333944.htm https://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm333944.h... [3] http://trade.gov/RCC/ http://trade.gov/RCC/ [4] https://www.fda.gov/food/newsevents/constituentupdates/ucm498611.htm https://www.fda.gov/food/newsevents/constituentupdates/ucm49...
dougmwne 10y ago
This is a pretty standard play inside the beltway. Many, many advocacy non-profits, some you have heard of, are really vehicles for increasing the ROI on corporate lobbying dollars. A humorous example: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/fight-save-paper-dollar-hits-dc-subway-system http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/fight-save-paper-dol...
EGreg 10y ago
What is the best argument to block imports?
- elihu 10y ago
  That depends on what the alternative is. If you allow imports of drugs that are already approved by the FDA, then the objections are mostly about economic incentives (i.e. high prices reward the companies that made the drug, etc..) If you allow imports on drugs that are approved in other countries but not by the FDA (iirc this was advocated by Ted Cruz in his debate against Bernie Sanders on health care a few months back), then the objection is that it basically neutralizes the ability of the FDA to block dangerous drugs and makes it easier to push drugs to market that aren't ready by promoting the drug in whichever country has the loosest standards or is most corrupt.
  - EGreg 10y ago
    "High prices reward the companies that made it" - so why not raise the prices even higher if that argument resonates with the public? :)
sureshn 10y ago
In India most of the Doctors go on a vacation to foreign countries at least twice a year, these are sponsored trips by non profit orgs of big pharmaceutical brands. There is also a massive lobby working in india to block generic drugs ; the present government thankfully did not yield to their lobby , the price of Stunt is now reduced by 80% , thats how much the price was marked up !
yalogin 10y ago
Unfortunately, insurance is the reason we have this health care issue in the US. There is no one to fight these special interest lobbys in the health care world. The hospitals don't care and a good number of patients don't care because of insurance. From what I see , people without insurance are treated as losers and their voice is not heard. Without insurance hospitals and doctors would fight the drug manufacturers on the patients' behalf.
- developer2 10y ago
  Insurance is the tip of the iceberg compared to the very existence of lobbying. You could completely remove the concept of insurance, and lobbying as it exists today in the US would still find a way to reign as the controlling interest. I recommend to all to watch the 2016 film "Miss Sloane". It does a fairly reasonable job of trying to showcase how corrupt lobbying is, though it's still a pathetically naive view of the situation actually in play. The film is far too gentle and not nearly vicious enough in portraying just how corrupt the system really is. At the end of the day, if everyone truly understood exactly how lobbying works, most citizens would send every single lobbyist, senator, and politician directly to jail for life without parole (I'd say death penalty, but I don't believe in that). The very concept of supposed "democracy" in the US would fail and require replacing it with something else. Every single political actor is in it for their own career, pure and simple. There is no such thing as a "politician for the people". It just doesn't exist. Stop trying to contradict me as you read this; Democrats, Republicans, and all third parties do not have your interests at heart. Corruption isn't just rampant, it is the very definition of the political institution that reigns today. Every single election I almost want to commit suicide, when I see the majority of your citizens having an apparent IQ of 10, fighting amongst themselves as if their choice of vote makes a single goddamn difference. The US is going to be the sole reason World War 3 happens in the next 50 years, and it will happen regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power. The party currently in control has absolutely no effect on how policies are put into action. They may publicly declare different views, but they all continue to perpetuate the exact same system of power. We are doomed to destroy ourselves, and it doesn't matter who you vote into power - we will get there regardless of any "democratic choice" the public tries to elect. Aside: Trump is a fucking joke and should have never had a chance of ever being elected. The same would have been true of Clinton. What the fuck is wrong with you people, that they were the two you wound up pitting against each other? Trump and Clinton were both pathetic choices, with neither of them having a single positive attribute. The country should have gone into civil war during the last election based on those candidates. Fuck the US and their politics. You are dooming the entire planet into becoming a pile of ashes. tldr; Fuck all Americans. You collectively make excuses to perpetuate your politicians' careers, pretending you don't have the power to change the way your country operates. Your country is the single reason our species is going to exterminate itself, and all you can offer is bullshit reasons to exclude yourselves from personally taking on any responsibility. Seriously, fuck Americans for resulting in 4+ billion deaths by the year 3000. Please incite a civil war in an election before 2028 so our species as a whole has a chance to survive.
OliverJones 10y ago
Ha ha. The senior VP of the Phrma lobbying group has the the name Scott LaGanga.
elihu 10y ago
There was a story on NPR awhile back about how, if I remember correctly, the U.S. government gives money away to drug companies to help fund drug research in exchange for a license to manufacture the resulting drug in case there's some kind of shortage or the drug is too expensive for anyone to buy it. This right has never been exercised, but there are some who think that they should start doing so to bring drug costs down.

237 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

A bill cosponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would provide a mechanism for Canadian drug manufacturers to sell to U.S. consumers and pharmacies. They do realize that for branded drugs, the "Canadian drug manufacturer" is the same as the US drug manufacturer, right?

dublinben 10y ago
People looking to save money aren't buying branded drugs, they're buying generics. Which are still far too expensive in the US, compared to other OECD markets.
- refurb 10y ago
  The US, with a few exceptions, actually has lower priced generic drugs than other countries, including the EU.[1] Interestingly, the study also shows that the U.S. has one of the highest levels of generic drug use relative to total prescription volume, and that generic prices are lower in the U.S. than in all the countries except Canada, where the difference is 6%. [1]http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/analyzing-brand-name-and-generic-drug-costs-in-the-u-s-and-eight-other-countries/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/analyzing-brand-n...
fencepost 10y ago
The manufacturer is the same, but manufacturers rarely sell directly to consumers. They sell to pharmacies, and medications at Canadian pharmacies are (surprise) generally priced based on whatever price controls and negotiated rates apply to Canadians. When those rates are 1/10th of the USA cost for the same drug from the same factory the same lot number, either someone's getting the drugs at less than cost or someone else is getting screwed on price. Or put differently, "Why does the USA fund so much of basic drug research and drug company profits daddy?" "Regulatory capture and bought politicians, son."

tomkinstinch 10y ago

The price differences between domestic and international medicines can be truly outrageous. I just got back from a work trip to a hospital in Sierra Leone, where the anthelmintic medicine Albendazole costs the equivalent of $1 USD at a private pharmacy (or even less if you don't care about packaging). The same treatment in the US (a single dose) cost me $430 USD (before insurance). This medicine is out of patent; the R&D costs have been recovered. There's no reason for it to cost as much as is does in the US, apart from greed. It's more of a niche drug in the US than it is in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is shelf stable unlike say the antibodies of an immunotherapy, or the rabies vaccine, so it's not perishable. I trust the purity of the US version more than the version sold internationally, but that is probably an irrational fear. Even with added costs of laboratory purity testing and import tariffs, those in the US would still be better off if we could import drugs from overseas. Some medicines are expensive for a reason: they're new and need to have R&D (and FDA) costs recovered (this is why we have patents), they have niche use and are produced in small quantities (cancer immunotherapies), they're perishable (biologicals), or all three. Many others are expensive because we have no regulatory protections against price gouging. Epi-Pens are another example. A 1mL vial of epinephrine costs ~$5, and the syringe to inject it costs pennies. Auto-injectors add some value, but not the $700 Mylan charges. They're fundamentally a pre-filled syringe a spring, and an injection molded case. I wonder what the system would look like if we granted longer pharmaceutical patents (say, 30 years), with the change that upon expiration of the patents medicines would be produced by the government and sold at cost (or provided for free).

HarryHirsch 10y ago
You'd expect just that to happen. The domestic market for human-rated albendazole is so small that it will sustain just one manufacturer, it's effectively a monopoly, and the monopolist can set prices to whatever he wants. We know what to do in such a situation (turn the monopolist into a regulated utility), but the current political climate won't permit this action. See the vet, get fenbendazole for huge dogs.
- devoply 10y ago
  This sort of rhetoric might work, but it doesn't in the face of Indian manufacturers who can easily be certified who will produce it for $1 and ship it to you the next day for $1 more. It's simply regulatory capture and a way of printing free money for people who already have money so they can rob the masses who don't. It's a scam, and it's stupid that we fall for it. The rich do get richer, and not for any other reason then they have money to affect regulatory capture. Generics should be nearly free. There is no reason for anyone to be making such large sized gains on generics.

panzagl 10y ago

Remember nonprofit is a tax status, not an indicator of morality.

twothamendment 10y ago
So very true. Nonprofit does not mean they don't have an agenda, backer, motive or some reason to be "fair" when looking at an issue.

niftich 10y ago

This is such an oblique position for legitimately grassroots activism to take. I mean, it's not like people are dropping dead en masse in Canada, out of all places, from taking supposedly sketchy, industrially-produced medication. Meanwhile, importing copycat generics from India is fine [1] (taken from an article with an obvious slant against Walmart, one major importer of such medications). On the regulatory front, the difference is that India lets the US FDA work there and inspect plants that export to the US [2], while Canada doesn't, and although the US and Canada have been slowly easing into formally trusting the other's regulatory frameworks [3] by working up from food safety [4], they are not quite there on the medical front. How much of this is legitimately grounded in science, logistics, diplomacy, and protectionism are up for debate. This is good investigative journalism. It certainly raises some additional questions that would have been difficult for an average person to learn on their own -- including questions about this nonprofit, about whether both parties' past attempts to allow Canadian drug imports have been comparable or different, about whether an organic movement concerned about drug safety exists at all, about the author's motivations for writing this piece; all good questions worthy of more research and conversation. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/india-wal-marts-drug-conn_b_108466.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/india-wal-marts-drug... [2] https://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm333944.htm https://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm333944.h... [3] http://trade.gov/RCC/ http://trade.gov/RCC/ [4] https://www.fda.gov/food/newsevents/constituentupdates/ucm498611.htm https://www.fda.gov/food/newsevents/constituentupdates/ucm49...

dougmwne 10y ago

This is a pretty standard play inside the beltway. Many, many advocacy non-profits, some you have heard of, are really vehicles for increasing the ROI on corporate lobbying dollars. A humorous example: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/fight-save-paper-dollar-hits-dc-subway-system http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/fight-save-paper-dol...

EGreg 10y ago

What is the best argument to block imports?

elihu 10y ago
That depends on what the alternative is. If you allow imports of drugs that are already approved by the FDA, then the objections are mostly about economic incentives (i.e. high prices reward the companies that made the drug, etc..) If you allow imports on drugs that are approved in other countries but not by the FDA (iirc this was advocated by Ted Cruz in his debate against Bernie Sanders on health care a few months back), then the objection is that it basically neutralizes the ability of the FDA to block dangerous drugs and makes it easier to push drugs to market that aren't ready by promoting the drug in whichever country has the loosest standards or is most corrupt.
- EGreg 10y ago
  "High prices reward the companies that made it" - so why not raise the prices even higher if that argument resonates with the public? :)

sureshn 10y ago

In India most of the Doctors go on a vacation to foreign countries at least twice a year, these are sponsored trips by non profit orgs of big pharmaceutical brands. There is also a massive lobby working in india to block generic drugs ; the present government thankfully did not yield to their lobby , the price of Stunt is now reduced by 80% , thats how much the price was marked up !

yalogin 10y ago

Unfortunately, insurance is the reason we have this health care issue in the US. There is no one to fight these special interest lobbys in the health care world. The hospitals don't care and a good number of patients don't care because of insurance. From what I see , people without insurance are treated as losers and their voice is not heard. Without insurance hospitals and doctors would fight the drug manufacturers on the patients' behalf.

developer2 10y ago
Insurance is the tip of the iceberg compared to the very existence of lobbying. You could completely remove the concept of insurance, and lobbying as it exists today in the US would still find a way to reign as the controlling interest. I recommend to all to watch the 2016 film "Miss Sloane". It does a fairly reasonable job of trying to showcase how corrupt lobbying is, though it's still a pathetically naive view of the situation actually in play. The film is far too gentle and not nearly vicious enough in portraying just how corrupt the system really is. At the end of the day, if everyone truly understood exactly how lobbying works, most citizens would send every single lobbyist, senator, and politician directly to jail for life without parole (I'd say death penalty, but I don't believe in that). The very concept of supposed "democracy" in the US would fail and require replacing it with something else. Every single political actor is in it for their own career, pure and simple. There is no such thing as a "politician for the people". It just doesn't exist. Stop trying to contradict me as you read this; Democrats, Republicans, and all third parties do not have your interests at heart. Corruption isn't just rampant, it is the very definition of the political institution that reigns today. Every single election I almost want to commit suicide, when I see the majority of your citizens having an apparent IQ of 10, fighting amongst themselves as if their choice of vote makes a single goddamn difference. The US is going to be the sole reason World War 3 happens in the next 50 years, and it will happen regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power. The party currently in control has absolutely no effect on how policies are put into action. They may publicly declare different views, but they all continue to perpetuate the exact same system of power. We are doomed to destroy ourselves, and it doesn't matter who you vote into power - we will get there regardless of any "democratic choice" the public tries to elect. Aside: Trump is a fucking joke and should have never had a chance of ever being elected. The same would have been true of Clinton. What the fuck is wrong with you people, that they were the two you wound up pitting against each other? Trump and Clinton were both pathetic choices, with neither of them having a single positive attribute. The country should have gone into civil war during the last election based on those candidates. Fuck the US and their politics. You are dooming the entire planet into becoming a pile of ashes. tldr; Fuck all Americans. You collectively make excuses to perpetuate your politicians' careers, pretending you don't have the power to change the way your country operates. Your country is the single reason our species is going to exterminate itself, and all you can offer is bullshit reasons to exclude yourselves from personally taking on any responsibility. Seriously, fuck Americans for resulting in 4+ billion deaths by the year 3000. Please incite a civil war in an election before 2028 so our species as a whole has a chance to survive.

OliverJones 10y ago

Ha ha. The senior VP of the Phrma lobbying group has the the name Scott LaGanga.

elihu 10y ago

There was a story on NPR awhile back about how, if I remember correctly, the U.S. government gives money away to drug companies to help fund drug research in exchange for a license to manufacture the resulting drug in case there's some kind of shortage or the drug is too expensive for anyone to buy it. This right has never been exercised, but there are some who think that they should start doing so to bring drug costs down.