5 ms·

If you totally discount the good manufacturing practices and traceability that pharmaceuticals have to follow, sure you can hack together a cheap substitute tha

by nimish 9y ago

If you totally discount the good manufacturing practices and traceability that pharmaceuticals have to follow, sure you can hack together a cheap substitute that might not work when the chips are down Except for biologics, many drugs are not that expensive to manufacture. The cost is in proving they will do what they say they do on the package.

maxerickson 9y ago
It's clear enough that the manufacturer is enjoying their market position rather than having their costs spiral out of control as demand increases.
matthewaveryusa 9y ago
Do you really believe that it costs upwards of 4000 dollars to track a little box with medication in it? For that money I hope each box comes with a solar rechargeable smartphone that sends a gps beacon every half hour.
- GhostVII 9y ago
  It's not the tracking, it's the super long and expensive regulatory process, and the cost of researching the drugs. Remember that for every successful drug, there are probably many that the company spent lots of money working on, and didn't end up working out. Someone has to pay for those failed ones as well.
  - anon946 9y ago
    How does that explain that the autoinjector was $690 in 2014 but $4500 today?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - mejin 9y ago
      I don't know about the autoinjector, but for a lot of medication the list price is there simply so that when the insurance company negotiates a lower price, the manufacturer will get a reasonable amount. in many cases expensive drugs can even be free if your income is low enough.
      - refurb 9y ago
        This is a good point as well. List price doesn't mean the price that people end up paying. Some of these products are discounted 80-90%.
- VLM 9y ago
  To actually put some numbers to the argument, literal aircraft grade bolts from spruce and specialties or spencer are super handwavy about twice the retail cost of similar low/single quantity bolts sold at home depot. I've done a couple ham radio antenna projects where I don't wanna climb up there again anytime soon nor do I want to clean up a failure and literal aircraft grade fasteners are surprisingly cheap and available and extremely reliable. Good enough for a 747, good enough to hold up my ham radio antenna. With modern technology, trace ability and all that is really not that expensive for commodities. Returning to the topic, it would be predictable if OPs re-invention of the concept of generic drugs were maybe 1/10th the price of name brand. Oddly enough that's not unusual for generic pharma to be shockingly cheaper than name brand. The real question is why aren't generic overdose drugs incredibly cheap? I would guess profiteering, but who knows. Maybe they're not shelf stable, perhaps extremely temp or UV sensitive?
ploxiln 9y ago
As noted by others, the cost of Evzio is up from $690 to $4500. So, yes, there always is some reason. The pharma company needs to cover the costs to their whole business with the revenues from their whole business, and they'll play whatever games help them do that. The price for a drug does not correspond to the cost to produce (or develop or get approval for) that particular drug, the price corresponds to maximum revenue for that drug. With all the max revenue from all drugs, they need to cover research for a bunch of drugs that won't work out, marketing, board of directors, and other expensive hires to power the rotating door between regulation and industry, etc. It would obviously be better if prices paid for long-existing well-known drugs did not mostly go to cover inept big-business shenanigans. "Real competition" would fix this, but the health care industry is fucked up in 10 different ways and we can't agree which direction to go to fix it. (In this case I'd say the problem is that the end-user is not paying for it, so bureaucracy and politics decide how much of which brand to buy, and the result is so bad the end-user would never pay for it, so we're stuck - it's unfixable.)

by nimish 9y ago

maxerickson 9y ago

It's clear enough that the manufacturer is enjoying their market position rather than having their costs spiral out of control as demand increases.

matthewaveryusa 9y ago

Do you really believe that it costs upwards of 4000 dollars to track a little box with medication in it? For that money I hope each box comes with a solar rechargeable smartphone that sends a gps beacon every half hour.

GhostVII 9y ago
It's not the tracking, it's the super long and expensive regulatory process, and the cost of researching the drugs. Remember that for every successful drug, there are probably many that the company spent lots of money working on, and didn't end up working out. Someone has to pay for those failed ones as well.
- anon946 9y ago
  How does that explain that the autoinjector was $690 in 2014 but $4500 today?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mejin 9y ago
    I don't know about the autoinjector, but for a lot of medication the list price is there simply so that when the insurance company negotiates a lower price, the manufacturer will get a reasonable amount. in many cases expensive drugs can even be free if your income is low enough.
    - refurb 9y ago
      This is a good point as well. List price doesn't mean the price that people end up paying. Some of these products are discounted 80-90%.
VLM 9y ago
To actually put some numbers to the argument, literal aircraft grade bolts from spruce and specialties or spencer are super handwavy about twice the retail cost of similar low/single quantity bolts sold at home depot. I've done a couple ham radio antenna projects where I don't wanna climb up there again anytime soon nor do I want to clean up a failure and literal aircraft grade fasteners are surprisingly cheap and available and extremely reliable. Good enough for a 747, good enough to hold up my ham radio antenna. With modern technology, trace ability and all that is really not that expensive for commodities. Returning to the topic, it would be predictable if OPs re-invention of the concept of generic drugs were maybe 1/10th the price of name brand. Oddly enough that's not unusual for generic pharma to be shockingly cheaper than name brand. The real question is why aren't generic overdose drugs incredibly cheap? I would guess profiteering, but who knows. Maybe they're not shelf stable, perhaps extremely temp or UV sensitive?

ploxiln 9y ago

As noted by others, the cost of Evzio is up from $690 to $4500. So, yes, there always is some reason. The pharma company needs to cover the costs to their whole business with the revenues from their whole business, and they'll play whatever games help them do that. The price for a drug does not correspond to the cost to produce (or develop or get approval for) that particular drug, the price corresponds to maximum revenue for that drug. With all the max revenue from all drugs, they need to cover research for a bunch of drugs that won't work out, marketing, board of directors, and other expensive hires to power the rotating door between regulation and industry, etc. It would obviously be better if prices paid for long-existing well-known drugs did not mostly go to cover inept big-business shenanigans. "Real competition" would fix this, but the health care industry is fucked up in 10 different ways and we can't agree which direction to go to fix it. (In this case I'd say the problem is that the end-user is not paying for it, so bureaucracy and politics decide how much of which brand to buy, and the result is so bad the end-user would never pay for it, so we're stuck - it's unfixable.)