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Pharmaceutical companies spend 100's of millions developing new drugs, but it costs essentially nothing to manufacture those pills once they have FDA approval.

Pharmaceutical companies spend 100's of millions developing new drugs, but it costs essentially nothing to manufacture those pills once they have FDA approval. Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate?

daughart 9y ago
People will pay for medicine. They won't pay for apps.
mathattack 9y ago
Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate? There is a large group pushing for Health Care to be free. This includes medicine.
- dagw 9y ago
  Well no. Some people are pushing for health care to be free to the end user. That is something very different.
- goseeastarwar 9y ago
  Universal health care still costs money, it just comes out of your wallet differently.
  - wayn3 9y ago
    For a lot of people, the cost of universal healthcare comes out of other peoples wallets. Germany has arguably the best, but certainly the free-est (in the sense that you are free to choose which doctor to see and what kind of treatment to receive), universal healthcare system. The premiums of almost 40% of the adult population are very close to 0. They don't pay for that. Other folks do. Enjoy those people voting for more free shit.
    - Arizhel 9y ago
      Yes, and Germany has a significantly higher quality of life than the US. You think that's a bad thing somehow?
      - stass 9y ago
        And how did you measure that?
        wayn3 9y ago
        Thats measured by the fact that we dont have 30 million opioid addicts who turn to hard opioids becaue seeing a doctor is way too expensive.
        favorited 9y ago
        Health insurance cost is not what caused the heroin flood in American streets, though the health care industry certainly played their part. People were seeing doctors who were over-prescribing opiates, making them cheap and readily available. The DEA (federal Drug Enforcement Administration) cracked down and suddenly these highly addictive prescription opiates were severely constrained, which increased demand for cheap heroin. Now heroin has replaced prescriptions as the cheap and readily available opiate.
        wayn3 9y ago
        And why did they over-prescribe opioids? Because getting surgery was prohibitively expensive? Doctors, in general, are doctors because they wanted to be doctors. Some of them may be in it for the money, but if you are really in it for the money, you become a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, not a primary care physician in Buttfuck, Idaho - where all the rural heroin epidemic victims are. Sure, some countries hand out opioids more freely than others, but in spain, Codeine is prescription free. Walk into a pharmacy, say you want codeine, you get codeine. I don't see an opioid epidemic in spain. If ease of access was the driving factor behind opioid abuse, spain should be all about opioid abuse. Codeine may not be the most potent opioid in the universe, but it is what it is. I think its the surgery thing. Because if you fuck up your spine and are in perpetual pain and also cant work anymore which just makes the problem worse because then you cant even afford the morphine, maybe taking the morphine isnt such a bad idea.
- taneq 9y ago
  Pushing for healthcare to be state funded, not free. No-one expects pharmaceutical R&D to be purely philanthropic.
sjg007 9y ago
I expect it to be cheaper and subject to less shenanigans.
nine_k 9y ago
Can you replicate a drug all by yourself at an essentially zero cost? Making another 100mg of a medicine may cost essentially zero on a pharmaceutical plant, but you can sell the access to the plant. Copying data is not just easy, but you have already bought the "factory equipment" needed for it, that is, a computer. Thus the drive to dumb down consumer computers (DRM) or move the essential things from users' possession so that they could not easily copy them (SaaS).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- goseeastarwar 9y ago
  You need to come up with a stronger argument than software should be free, because it's easier to copy than viagra.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    I'm not making an argument for "software should be free" here. I'm trying to explain why people often try to copy software or media: it's trivially easy, obviously not requiring the original author's expertise. If they pay the author in such a situation, it's because they want to support the author, not because they are forced to. This ends up with quite little. When an enforcement agency (a publisher) intervenes, the amount extracted grows, but most of it is taken by said agency.
- doctorwho 9y ago
  I can't but there are people out there who can, and have done it... http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/martin-shkreli-s-750-life-saving-drug-recreated-by-high-school-students-for-2-1.3185163 http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/martin-shkreli-s-750-life-savin...
iplaw 9y ago
A lot of people do, actually, and your estimate of the cost associated with bringing a drug to market is off by an order of magnitude. The true cost of bringing a drug to market - inclusive of the extensive research and development required, the failed candidates, the FDA testing and approval processes, etc. - is around $2,800,000,000. And so, as the saying goes, the first pill costs $2.8B, the second pill costs $0.01. "People" only consider the $0.01 cost to produce the pills that they desire to take, and seem to easily ignore that initial $2.8B investment. This is why patent protection is so critical to the success of many industries, especially medical devices and pharmaceuticals. This also explains why drug companies refuse to develop life-saving drugs if the potential market for the drug is too small. In many cases, they would have to charge $1,000,000+ per treatment to break even. There are several medications on the market which, for the full course of treatment, cost around $300,000. This seems to be the upper limit in drug development, and insurance is willing to pay the price because one successful treatment will likely save them 10x that amount in the elimination of future care. This is a recent (3/2/2017) article [1] on one such $300,000/year enzyme-based treatment for a rare disease which affects an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people worldwide! Development of drugs for rare diseases has been a major problem for quite a while, with legislation on the matter dating back to 1983. However, it's apparent that it's still a problem. And here is another article on yet another $300,000 treatment (see, there's that number again) to treat cystic fibrosis. [1]: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/pompe-drug-lauded-by-trump-costs-300000-a-year.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/pompe-drug-lauded-by-trump-co... [2]: https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/09/19/sarepta-duchenne-drug-prices/ https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/09/19/sarepta-duchen...
- fellellor 9y ago
  I wonder how much of that is just the result of bureaucratic inefficiency. I'm sure if one looks deep enough and wide enough, that cost may be cut down by several orders of magnitude. Maybe not. However, no matter what the case, there may be no incentive to do so, for the people who are actually in a position to do such a thing.
  - iplaw 9y ago
    I would have to say that not much is the result of pure bureaucratic inefficiency. The extensive clinical trials are there for a reason, and that is to prevent the release of thalidomide-like pharmaceuticals. Researching, developing, and vetting failed candidates is also a major cost that must be recouped via the drugs successfully brought to market. The actual costs associated with bureaucratic inefficiencies are nil in comparison. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development#Research_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development#Resea...
Aaargh20318 9y ago
> Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate? The point is that it would be easier for people to digest the costs if they paid for development, not for the cost of producing the pills. Let's say it costs $1B to produce a certain new type of medication. The company who developed it expects to sell about 100 million pills a year. The pills cost $0.01 to produce. Sell the pills for $0.02 and for the first 10 years add a $20/pill 'development cost recuperation' charge, list it on the bill as such. The company gets a 200% R.O.I. on initial development, plus a 200% R.O.I on every pill sold. Few people have problems with a company recovering their costs and making a decent profit. The problems start when the costs have been made back ten times over and they are still keeping the price high using the initial development costs as an excuse. What I'm trying to say is that companies should adjust their business model to align with how people perceive the world, instead of trying to rewrite millions of years of evolution to fit their business model. Why are services like Netflix and Spotify so popular ? Not because people suddenly changed their mind about paying for IP. Netflix and Spotify sell a service, and people accept that services cost money.
- nbohra 9y ago
  And so if we continue your last point are you saying that all software sales should actually be software "usage" sales and every time you use the software you have time, just like you pay everytime you watch a movie on Netflx?
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    Netflix isn't paid per movie, it's a monthly rate.
hanoz 9y ago
> Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate? I'm sure many people would expect that, if they were perform the replication themselves using thier own equipment, as they do for software and media.
doctorwho 9y ago
Pharmaceutical companies R&D costs for new drugs are heavily subsidized by tax credits and write offs. Capital is required to kick start the process but much of that can be recovered at tax time, the rest when they start selling or licensing the drug.

daughart 9y ago

People will pay for medicine. They won't pay for apps.

mathattack 9y ago

Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate? There is a large group pushing for Health Care to be free. This includes medicine.

dagw 9y ago
Well no. Some people are pushing for health care to be free to the end user. That is something very different.
goseeastarwar 9y ago
Universal health care still costs money, it just comes out of your wallet differently.
- wayn3 9y ago
  For a lot of people, the cost of universal healthcare comes out of other peoples wallets. Germany has arguably the best, but certainly the free-est (in the sense that you are free to choose which doctor to see and what kind of treatment to receive), universal healthcare system. The premiums of almost 40% of the adult population are very close to 0. They don't pay for that. Other folks do. Enjoy those people voting for more free shit.
  - Arizhel 9y ago
    Yes, and Germany has a significantly higher quality of life than the US. You think that's a bad thing somehow?
    - stass 9y ago
      And how did you measure that?
      - wayn3 9y ago
        Thats measured by the fact that we dont have 30 million opioid addicts who turn to hard opioids becaue seeing a doctor is way too expensive.
        favorited 9y ago
        Health insurance cost is not what caused the heroin flood in American streets, though the health care industry certainly played their part. People were seeing doctors who were over-prescribing opiates, making them cheap and readily available. The DEA (federal Drug Enforcement Administration) cracked down and suddenly these highly addictive prescription opiates were severely constrained, which increased demand for cheap heroin. Now heroin has replaced prescriptions as the cheap and readily available opiate.
        wayn3 9y ago
        And why did they over-prescribe opioids? Because getting surgery was prohibitively expensive? Doctors, in general, are doctors because they wanted to be doctors. Some of them may be in it for the money, but if you are really in it for the money, you become a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, not a primary care physician in Buttfuck, Idaho - where all the rural heroin epidemic victims are. Sure, some countries hand out opioids more freely than others, but in spain, Codeine is prescription free. Walk into a pharmacy, say you want codeine, you get codeine. I don't see an opioid epidemic in spain. If ease of access was the driving factor behind opioid abuse, spain should be all about opioid abuse. Codeine may not be the most potent opioid in the universe, but it is what it is. I think its the surgery thing. Because if you fuck up your spine and are in perpetual pain and also cant work anymore which just makes the problem worse because then you cant even afford the morphine, maybe taking the morphine isnt such a bad idea.
taneq 9y ago
Pushing for healthcare to be state funded, not free. No-one expects pharmaceutical R&D to be purely philanthropic.

sjg007 9y ago

I expect it to be cheaper and subject to less shenanigans.

nine_k 9y ago

Can you replicate a drug all by yourself at an essentially zero cost? Making another 100mg of a medicine may cost essentially zero on a pharmaceutical plant, but you can sell the access to the plant. Copying data is not just easy, but you have already bought the "factory equipment" needed for it, that is, a computer. Thus the drive to dumb down consumer computers (DRM) or move the essential things from users' possession so that they could not easily copy them (SaaS).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
goseeastarwar 9y ago
You need to come up with a stronger argument than software should be free, because it's easier to copy than viagra.
- nine_k 9y ago
  I'm not making an argument for "software should be free" here. I'm trying to explain why people often try to copy software or media: it's trivially easy, obviously not requiring the original author's expertise. If they pay the author in such a situation, it's because they want to support the author, not because they are forced to. This ends up with quite little. When an enforcement agency (a publisher) intervenes, the amount extracted grows, but most of it is taken by said agency.
doctorwho 9y ago
I can't but there are people out there who can, and have done it... http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/martin-shkreli-s-750-life-saving-drug-recreated-by-high-school-students-for-2-1.3185163 http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/martin-shkreli-s-750-life-savin...

iplaw 9y ago

A lot of people do, actually, and your estimate of the cost associated with bringing a drug to market is off by an order of magnitude. The true cost of bringing a drug to market - inclusive of the extensive research and development required, the failed candidates, the FDA testing and approval processes, etc. - is around $2,800,000,000. And so, as the saying goes, the first pill costs $2.8B, the second pill costs $0.01. "People" only consider the $0.01 cost to produce the pills that they desire to take, and seem to easily ignore that initial $2.8B investment. This is why patent protection is so critical to the success of many industries, especially medical devices and pharmaceuticals. This also explains why drug companies refuse to develop life-saving drugs if the potential market for the drug is too small. In many cases, they would have to charge $1,000,000+ per treatment to break even. There are several medications on the market which, for the full course of treatment, cost around $300,000. This seems to be the upper limit in drug development, and insurance is willing to pay the price because one successful treatment will likely save them 10x that amount in the elimination of future care. This is a recent (3/2/2017) article [1] on one such $300,000/year enzyme-based treatment for a rare disease which affects an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people worldwide! Development of drugs for rare diseases has been a major problem for quite a while, with legislation on the matter dating back to 1983. However, it's apparent that it's still a problem. And here is another article on yet another $300,000 treatment (see, there's that number again) to treat cystic fibrosis. [1]: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/pompe-drug-lauded-by-trump-costs-300000-a-year.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/pompe-drug-lauded-by-trump-co... [2]: https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/09/19/sarepta-duchenne-drug-prices/ https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/09/19/sarepta-duchen...

fellellor 9y ago
I wonder how much of that is just the result of bureaucratic inefficiency. I'm sure if one looks deep enough and wide enough, that cost may be cut down by several orders of magnitude. Maybe not. However, no matter what the case, there may be no incentive to do so, for the people who are actually in a position to do such a thing.
- iplaw 9y ago
  I would have to say that not much is the result of pure bureaucratic inefficiency. The extensive clinical trials are there for a reason, and that is to prevent the release of thalidomide-like pharmaceuticals. Researching, developing, and vetting failed candidates is also a major cost that must be recouped via the drugs successfully brought to market. The actual costs associated with bureaucratic inefficiencies are nil in comparison. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development#Research_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development#Resea...

Aaargh20318 9y ago

> Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate? The point is that it would be easier for people to digest the costs if they paid for development, not for the cost of producing the pills. Let's say it costs $1B to produce a certain new type of medication. The company who developed it expects to sell about 100 million pills a year. The pills cost $0.01 to produce. Sell the pills for $0.02 and for the first 10 years add a $20/pill 'development cost recuperation' charge, list it on the bill as such. The company gets a 200% R.O.I. on initial development, plus a 200% R.O.I on every pill sold. Few people have problems with a company recovering their costs and making a decent profit. The problems start when the costs have been made back ten times over and they are still keeping the price high using the initial development costs as an excuse. What I'm trying to say is that companies should adjust their business model to align with how people perceive the world, instead of trying to rewrite millions of years of evolution to fit their business model. Why are services like Netflix and Spotify so popular ? Not because people suddenly changed their mind about paying for IP. Netflix and Spotify sell a service, and people accept that services cost money.

nbohra 9y ago
And so if we continue your last point are you saying that all software sales should actually be software "usage" sales and every time you use the software you have time, just like you pay everytime you watch a movie on Netflx?
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Netflix isn't paid per movie, it's a monthly rate.

hanoz 9y ago

> Who expects medicine to be free because they cost nothing to replicate? I'm sure many people would expect that, if they were perform the replication themselves using thier own equipment, as they do for software and media.

doctorwho 9y ago

Pharmaceutical companies R&D costs for new drugs are heavily subsidized by tax credits and write offs. Capital is required to kick start the process but much of that can be recovered at tax time, the rest when they start selling or licensing the drug.