> If I were an insurance company, I'd consider buying a small pharma outfit and target it at these orphan drugs just to save money. I've looked into it but the

> If I were an insurance company, I'd consider buying a small pharma outfit and target it at these orphan drugs just to save money. I've looked into it but the regulations get in the way. It's a crock of bologna - if you hire an American Chemist and set up an American chemical plant, you have to build the facility and wait for FDA inspection before you can start manufacturing and in some cases, you have to pay for a trial to prove that your medication works. Or you can just import the drug from China and India and the FDA will let you act like a compounding pharmacy and repackage the Chinese / Indian active ingredients. Then you have to pay the licensing fees which are borne equally by all manufacturers. If you make 100 doses/yr, you pay as much as your competitor who makes 1 billion doses/yr. There's a reason the market for easily-produced medication hasn't been disrupted yet, if you make affordable high quality medications in a way that doesn't defer to the FDA's stupid system, you can and will go to prison.