4 ms·

These price comparisons are almost always disingenuous. One price only includes the cost to produce the medicine, and the other also includes years of R&D, 10+

These price comparisons are almost always disingenuous. One price only includes the cost to produce the medicine, and the other also includes years of R&D, 10+ years of trials, marketing, and distribution. Sure, the $84000 probably still includes a hefty profit margin, but with all those extra costs the $300 medicine becomes a lot more expensive.

yardie 8y ago
I’m not buying it. Nothing justifies a 300x markup for drugs. State and federal grants cover most of the research. Drug companies only enter the picture near the late stage and only if it’s a viable project.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > State and federal grants cover most of the research. That's straight up not true. Most of the money spent on research is obtained directly through pharmaceutical sales in the US, and a large chunk of the rest is obtained indirectly in the same manner.
  - fricat1ve 8y ago
    You keep stating this as if it were a fact, but did it occur to you that delineating what research spending in fact contributed is complex? Medicine is perhaps the industry that most exemplifies one with large confluent streams of money from public, private, and charitable sources involved at different levels of training, research, and practice.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > You keep stating this as if it were a fact, but did it occur to you that delineating what research spending in fact contributed is complex? Yes, as someone who's actually done this sort of tracking and research extensively, it has, in fact, occurred to me that it is a complex task.
snarfy 8y ago
No, this is the common lie they tell you. The majority of money spent in R&D is public money. When they say "It cost $10 million to develop" it doesn't mean that's what they paid out of pocket. Most of it is research done at universities through grants. My wife was treated for MS using a cancer drug developed in the 50s. If you have cancer, the drug costs about $20. If you have MS, the drug costs $450,000+ (that was my bill). The only difference is FDA approval.
- DangerousPie 8y ago
  > The majority of money spent in R&D is public money. When they say "It cost $10 million to develop" it doesn't mean that's what they paid out of pocket. Most of it is research done at universities through grants. Do you have some citations for that? Public grant money may pay for some early-stage basic research, but clinical trials (especially the later ones) are almost always run and paid for by pharma companies, aren't they? And those are the really expensive part. > My wife was treated for MS using a cancer drug developed in the 50s. If you have cancer, the drug costs about $20. If you have MS, the drug costs $450,000+ (that was my bill). The only difference is FDA approval. No, the difference is that someone actually went and spent years researching MS, figuring out that this cancer drug could potentially treat it, ran multiple phases of clinical trials to show that it was effective and THEN got FDA approval. Why would any company go through all this trouble if you could just buy the generic cancer drug from a competitor at the end?
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > The majority of money spent in R&D is public money. No, most of the money spent on R&D in the entire world is funded though pharmaceutical sales in the US. The amount that comes from truly exogenous sources is vanishingly small. > My wife was treated for MS using a cancer drug developed in the 50s. If you have cancer, the drug costs about $20. If you have MS, the drug costs $450,000+ (that was my bill). The only difference is FDA approval. You're proving the point. It's more expensive because they have to go through the research and approval process all over again for the new usage of the drug. The marginal cost of producing the medicine isn't the issue.
  - 8y ago

yardie 8y ago

I’m not buying it. Nothing justifies a 300x markup for drugs. State and federal grants cover most of the research. Drug companies only enter the picture near the late stage and only if it’s a viable project.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> State and federal grants cover most of the research. That's straight up not true. Most of the money spent on research is obtained directly through pharmaceutical sales in the US, and a large chunk of the rest is obtained indirectly in the same manner.
- fricat1ve 8y ago
  You keep stating this as if it were a fact, but did it occur to you that delineating what research spending in fact contributed is complex? Medicine is perhaps the industry that most exemplifies one with large confluent streams of money from public, private, and charitable sources involved at different levels of training, research, and practice.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > You keep stating this as if it were a fact, but did it occur to you that delineating what research spending in fact contributed is complex? Yes, as someone who's actually done this sort of tracking and research extensively, it has, in fact, occurred to me that it is a complex task.

snarfy 8y ago

No, this is the common lie they tell you. The majority of money spent in R&D is public money. When they say "It cost $10 million to develop" it doesn't mean that's what they paid out of pocket. Most of it is research done at universities through grants. My wife was treated for MS using a cancer drug developed in the 50s. If you have cancer, the drug costs about $20. If you have MS, the drug costs $450,000+ (that was my bill). The only difference is FDA approval.

DangerousPie 8y ago
> The majority of money spent in R&D is public money. When they say "It cost $10 million to develop" it doesn't mean that's what they paid out of pocket. Most of it is research done at universities through grants. Do you have some citations for that? Public grant money may pay for some early-stage basic research, but clinical trials (especially the later ones) are almost always run and paid for by pharma companies, aren't they? And those are the really expensive part. > My wife was treated for MS using a cancer drug developed in the 50s. If you have cancer, the drug costs about $20. If you have MS, the drug costs $450,000+ (that was my bill). The only difference is FDA approval. No, the difference is that someone actually went and spent years researching MS, figuring out that this cancer drug could potentially treat it, ran multiple phases of clinical trials to show that it was effective and THEN got FDA approval. Why would any company go through all this trouble if you could just buy the generic cancer drug from a competitor at the end?
chimeracoder 8y ago
> The majority of money spent in R&D is public money. No, most of the money spent on R&D in the entire world is funded though pharmaceutical sales in the US. The amount that comes from truly exogenous sources is vanishingly small. > My wife was treated for MS using a cancer drug developed in the 50s. If you have cancer, the drug costs about $20. If you have MS, the drug costs $450,000+ (that was my bill). The only difference is FDA approval. You're proving the point. It's more expensive because they have to go through the research and approval process all over again for the new usage of the drug. The marginal cost of producing the medicine isn't the issue.
- 8y ago