5 ms·
> But Revlimid is also, I soon learned, extraordinarily expensive, costing nearly $1,000 for each daily pill. Thanks to the bargaining power of my nationalised
by eterm 1y ago
> But Revlimid is also, I soon learned, extraordinarily expensive, costing nearly $1,000 for each daily pill.
Thanks to the bargaining power of my nationalised healthcare, my government pays around 1/5th of that, and I'll pay nothing myself.
Revlamid is listed under it's generic name Lenalidomide, price is in pence: https://www.drugtariff.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/#/00791628-DD/DD00791454/Part%20VIIIA%20products%20L https://www.drugtariff.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/#/00791628-DD/DD0079145...
- jonplackett 1y agoEven that is still an obscene amount if money for something that cost 20p per pill.
- tptacek 1y agoThe manufacturing cost of a 20p pill has literally nothing to do with its price.
- jonplackett 1y agoYes I know. And that is, in my opinion, a problem.
- tptacek 1y agoSo people who figure out how to make 20p drugs and get them approved should make... 20p/dose. People who figure out how to target ads 1% more effectively should make billions, but people who cure diseases should do so at cost, less their R&D costs. I'm trying to remember who it was who said you could sum all of economics up with the sentence "people respond to incentives."
- cpach 1y agoWas it Charlie Munger perhaps?
- pstuart 1y agoSo $200/pill for something that costs them $0.25 to make. That's still obscene.
- thrance 1y agoWhich is why there should be no patents in healthcare. Most research is already publicly-funded, production and distribution should be too. We could drown in cheap medicine, instead we artificially increase the prices by 5000% to fatten the pockets of already super-wealthy parasites.
- tptacek 1y agoAre you thinking this through? It costs billions of dollars to bring a new drug to market --- before sales, admin, and marketing costs --- and most attempts to bring drugs to market fail. In the very best case for the public, the drugs are incredibly cheap to manufacture; that's an achievement for a pharma company. Do you see how the incentives work here?
- thrance 1y agoAre you arguing this can't be achieved by the public sector too? Or that pharma companies don't make obscene margins?
- tptacek 1y agoI'm arguing that the logic in the comment I responded to is dubious, for the reasons I gave.
- thrance 1y agoYou just gestured vaguely about it being expensive and "incentives". I would like to know why you believe the private sector is uniquely equipped to "bring drugs to the market" and why you think having middlemen is more efficient than not having them.