24 ms·

Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

160 points by zoowar 14y ago

belorn 14y ago
> the patentability of modifications to existing drugs under Indian law A key point here is that the original drug itself was patented, and has expired. The issue that the Indian court had with Gleevec patent application is that it only rearranged the molecule in a new crystal pattern, ie Polymorphism. The Indian court consider polymorphism to be a well known technique when working with drugs, and just applying polymorphism to a old drug and record what it did do not fulfill the requirement for patentable.
- rohamg 14y ago
  This. The US patent system rewards the same kind of "innovation" as the financial sector did pre-subprime. Look at the introduction rate of new drugs vs derivatives of old (and about to expire) drugs over the past decades to see what I mean. The argument that "if drugs were cheaper (=they saved more lives) pharma r&d would crumble" is facetious and speaks volumes about the priorities of the individual making the argument.
- nikster 14y ago
  The US patent and IP system is completely perverted. The reason to have copyrights and patents is to fairly compensate the innovators (that part works really well). But there's an expiry on both patents and copyright - that's explicitly there so innovations can benefit the people, and to spur new innovation. And that's where the US system falls apart. Loopholes are found times and again and in the US once you have a copyright or patent, you basically have it forever. A monopoly, hurrah! That's just plain wrong. The US needs to fix its system. I imagine when that happens it will also make more sense for Pharma industry to spend more on R&D than they spend on marketing and bribing Doctors and healthcare providers and politicians. Really happy to hear Indian courts don't fall for this sort of crap. How can Disney have a copyright on Mickey Mouse? An absolute joke.
- TheCondor 14y ago
  Seems like there should be a penalty for evergreening patents like this without some measurable improvement in product quality. I might have different feelings about it if India just rejected the initial patent, but the reapsearch has been paid for, profits taken...
product50 14y ago
Looks to be a sponsored article from Novartis and the likes.
nhashem 14y ago
This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation. Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that." And what option does the pharmaceutical company have? Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly. Because healthcare payments are not functionally a government-controlled monopoly (ie. socialized healthcare) in the US, this doesn't happen. So Novartis can sell Gleevec for $75,000 in the US, because a healthcare provider will agree to pay and just bill it to private insurance companies, and those private insurance company will agree to pay and just increase their premiums on the customers, who probably won't notice because, assuming they have employer-provided health insurance, their employer won't take anything more out of their paycheck, but then say increased operational costs means nobody can get a raise. So US healthcare leads the way in innovation because device and pharmaceutical manufacturers can make a lot more money than in countries with socialized healthcare. So these companies make most of their profits in the US, and then they'll grumble and accept lower prices in every other country, because at that point it's just icing to them. After the profits made in the US, getting $2,500 from Indians for Gleevac is better than getting $0. The US is effectively subsidizing advanced healthcare for every other country in the world. This is pretty crappy, obviously, but this is a complex problem to solve. Because if you move to a cost-controlling system, then you will stifle legitimate innovation. Why jump through all our FDA clinical trial hurdles if there's no promise of a big payout at the end? Why invest in R&D without the protections of patent law to prevent your drugs from being trivially replicated? I'm not trying to say, "oh, those poor profits of the drug companies." I recognize this may not be a sympathetic argument. But it's likely to be tough to control costs and yet maintain R&D and innovation. Right now, every other country essentially gets the US to pay the bill for the innovation and they reap the benefits at a lower cost, but with US healthcare already consuming 1/6 of our economy, this isn't sustainable.
- snippyhollow 14y ago
  US firms are investing less in R&D relatively to their rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_leaders_in_terms_of_healthcare_revenue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_... than their French/UK (publicly-funded healthcare) counterparts. The US are not "subsidizing it for poor countries" more than other rich countries. The truth in the case you're making is not specific to healthcare and is that "research (private and public) of rich countries that can afford it" benefits poorer countries. So what, let's stop advancing science? We're all better off this way!
inDigiNeous 14y ago
Chemotherapy is a form therapy where the medicine companies heal the the patient off his money and then kill him.
- mansigandhi 14y ago
  Huh? Do you have an idea of how science and medicine works?
  - inDigiNeous 14y ago
    Just wondering what this has to do with Hacker News. But anyway, check out: http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-never-works.html http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-ne... http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-medical-establishment/ http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-me... http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-chemotherapy-is-a-hoax.htm http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-ch... Just a few writings and articles speaking about the lie that is chemotherapy. I have an idea how medicine works, let me spell it out here for you: 1. Poison the foods (GMO, sugars, fats, overprocessed crap that is the idea of western food) 2. Sell medicine for people who eat this poisoned food 3. Profit! Now, this is _my_ idea. You are allowed to have your own idea about this.
    - gambiting 14y ago
      This "lie", as you call chemotherapy, has kept my dad alive for 5 more years than what the doctors were giving him when he was first diagnosed. Would he get cancer if he didn't eat sugars,fats and over processed food our western society eats? Maybe. But you don't know that. Instead, you are trying to neglect the obvious, which is the fact that chemotherapy is actually saving lives of people like my dad. I agree that we should improve the way we live our lives, eat healthier, exercise more etc etc.....but you can't bash companies making life saving drugs.
      - TheAnimus 14y ago
gambiting 14y ago
My father has been on Glivec for the last 7 years, and this is the only reason he is still alive - when he was diagnosed with GIST doctors told him he would have 2 years left at best, but decided to add him to clinical trials of Glivec for GIST patients. The whole treatment is paid for by our national health care, I believe it costs....$3000 per month, that's how much a single box of Glivec costs here and my dad has to take a pill every day so he gets a new box every month. Not really related, but I wanted to mention this, since some people really want to show Novartis as evil, and while they probably charge too much for their drugs in the US, their medicine actually saves lives, my dad being the best example of that.
- tuananh 14y ago
  i don't know about American but when it comes to health-related issues, people in my country tends not to bargain about the price. That's least of their worry as long as they can afford it.
- userulluipeste 14y ago
  Nobody has a problem that "medicine actually saves lives" - that's what medicine is supposed to do, isn't it? The problem is when that life-saving medicine becomes unavailable due to it's pricing, which means sheer death!
- brazzy 14y ago
  How exactly is extracting the maximum possible revenue from people for giving them something that saves their lives NOT evil?
  - gambiting 14y ago
    As far as I know, companies are supposed to make profit,they are not charities. Especially if you are so large that you sell shares in company, then you have a LEGAL obligation to the shareholders to always take decisions that maximise profit over everything else(unless you can show that selling your product cheaper is going to bring more money to the company in the long run). This is not "evil" - this is just how these companies work. It's like what Steve Jobs said,when he was asked by Obama what would it take to bring his business back to US, out of China. And Steve said very correctly, that there is nothing he can do - if the production is cheaper in China, they have to go that route,since they have legal obligations to work in the best interest of their shareholders. (and I am not saying this is a good thing. This is just how this entire system works, and if you opened your own company, you would have to play by the same rules,no matter how noble you were. If you want this situation to change, change the system) The only way to combat this is to have a national health care system,that sets their own prices for drugs it buys from companies. If my country says that the maximum it can pay per box of Glivec is $3000, then Novartis can't do anything about it. Well, they could decide to not sell the drug at all, but they would rather have some money than none.
ofacup 14y ago
i've worked at novartis. they spend 3 times as much on marketing than research. that's what's wrong with the whole deal
- nikster 14y ago
  Kind of shocking but that's not even the biggest problem. The first problem is the money they spend on buying laws, aka bribes, aka "lobbying" as the USA likes to call it. Corruption in its finest form. That's why they get perpetual patents; The second problem - and I kind of assume that that falls under "marketing" expenses - is that they can basically bribe healthcare providers and doctors to use their products. Result: Most expensive health care system in the world, by a large margin.
p6v53as 14y ago
In other words americans partly pay for indians for drugs by having these patent laws.
- userulluipeste 14y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5530662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5530662 "The issue the Indian court had with Gleevec patent application is that it only rearranged the molecule in a new crystal pattern" ...in other words the American patenting system is more corrupted than India's. Reading again my last written sentence I can not but awe - I never thought I might ever compare America with India and find something less corrupt in the last one!
areddy 14y ago
'Gleevec is under patent in the U.S., but not in India' This is a biased article, Novartis tried to gain one more patent for existing drug with slight modification. see 'Calling big pharma's bluff' http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/calling-big-pharmas-bluff/article4573890.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/calling-big-pharmas-blu...
scotty79 14y ago
> Rejecting the Gleevec patent application is not the only step that the Indian government has taken to circumvent patents on cancer drugs. It's not circumventing the patent. It's not granting the patent. People think that patent is some kind of innate natural right and if you manage to trick one country into giving you monopoly you are somehow in the right now and other countries that don't see the point of giving you similar monopoly are circumventing your sense of entitlement.
- nodeless 14y ago
  Very very well said.
smoyer 14y ago
It's not nearly the difference that it would appear ... Think about the per capita incomes of both countries and you'll find the drug is prohibitively expensive in both countries. If you look at it from the drug companies perspective; it's a case of maximizing their profits in both markets and competition is just one factor in doing so.
replicatorblog 14y ago
One point I haven't seen explained is why the Indian companies don't manufacture the drug based on the molecule described in the expired patent. If what the courts are saying is true and the new patent covering crystallization is trivial, the expired patent should be just as effective and free to use? If it's not as effective, that seems to make the case for the new Novartis patent.
- anuraj 14y ago
  Many Indian companies including Cipla,Natco and Sun Pharma has been manufacturing generic versions for the last 10 years or so and are selling at a fraction of the price. For your information, India is the largest generic drug producer globally. http://www.indiamart.com/moderntimes/imatinib-mesylate-capsules.html http://www.indiamart.com/moderntimes/imatinib-mesylate-capsu...
sageikosa 14y ago
Because prices are determined by what the market will bear? I thought that was the stock answer for any pricing question.
gosub 14y ago
Is US healthcare waiting to be disrupted?
pc86 14y ago
All things being equal, stuff is always going to be more expensive in the US than in India. If you're complaining about $70,000 here v. $2,500 there, I'm going to assume you're charging the same for your services here as someone is in India, right? Right?
snarfy 14y ago
Please tell me how charging $50,000/yr for 30 year old dimethyl fumarate (BG-12/tecfidera) for the treatment of multiple sclerosis is due to innovation. It shouldn't cost more than aspirin. The only reason they are charging that much is because that's how much all other MS medications cost. Oligopoly, it's like a monopoly, only legal.
- refurb 14y ago
  Because someone has to pay for the phase 3 clinical trials to actually prove that it's safe and that it works? That doesn't come cheap. If Biogen charged only the price of aspirin, they would never recoup their R&D costs, let alone make a profit.
  - visarga 14y ago
    Then maybe we should find a way to make trials cheaper. Why does it cost one billion dollars to bring a new drug to market? That could drastically limit the innovation.
    - refurb 14y ago
      You need to work with the FDA on that one, they are the ones that set the trial requirements. It all comes down to risk-reward. Even though the FDA has very rigorous efficacy and safety standards, drugs still get through that kill people. If you want to make drug approvals cheaper, then you have to be willing to put up with a higher risk of drugs getting through that shouldn't have.
ktzar 14y ago
Lawers
Nano2rad 14y ago
This article does not say why the Gleevec patent was rejected, maybe it was not the purpose of the article. Indian companies did not invest in clinical trials, even in the discovery of the molecule. They are just using the disclosures. Even if there is compulsory licencing there should be a cost, about 20 million dollars would be okay based on the average research cost and population of India. I dont believe in compulsory licencing but believe in price control. Let those patent holder companies have exclusive rights but govt should have the right to determine the price based on the purchasing power of the people. The better option of course is govt or the insurance companies negotiate with patent holder. But in India there is no health insurance run by govt that addresses the real price of drugs. Most of the insurance for poor is like a fixed amount like Rs. 30 thousand which does not even cover 10 days in hospital. The price control is supposed to make the cost of healthcare down, but there is no control of the cost of surgical procedures.
zwieback 14y ago
Couldn't healthcare tourism to India solve some of this problem? It's already happening on a smaller scale in Mexico.
snambi 14y ago
Nice post. In USA employers pay the medical bills through insurance companies. In india either government pays the bill or the patient. So, they cannot afford $70,000 bill. So the government takes the decision that is beneficial to itself and patients. In US the pharma companies and insurance companies decide what is the price.
3am 14y ago
The first comment after the article ends the discussion: "This article is misleading from the beginning. India did not refuse to issue a patent for Gleevec, it refused to extend the patent Gleevec already had, based on merely superficial changes to the formula, a practice known as "evergreening", which pharmaceutical companies use to extend the monopoly on their medications as long as possible." That is completely accurate, and more informative that the article in fewer words.
baldfat 14y ago
So explain to my dying son why his cancer Osteosarcoma has a flat line of 15% survival rate for the past 30 years? WHY IS THERE NOT ONE NEW PEDIATRIC CHEMOTHERAPY IN THE PAST @) YEARS INTRODUCED IN AMERICA?
- baldfat 14y ago
  20 Years

160 points by zoowar 14y ago

> the patentability of modifications to existing drugs under Indian law A key point here is that the original drug itself was patented, and has expired. The issue that the Indian court had with Gleevec patent application is that it only rearranged the molecule in a new crystal pattern, ie Polymorphism. The Indian court consider polymorphism to be a well known technique when working with drugs, and just applying polymorphism to a old drug and record what it did do not fulfill the requirement for patentable.

rohamg 14y ago
This. The US patent system rewards the same kind of "innovation" as the financial sector did pre-subprime. Look at the introduction rate of new drugs vs derivatives of old (and about to expire) drugs over the past decades to see what I mean. The argument that "if drugs were cheaper (=they saved more lives) pharma r&d would crumble" is facetious and speaks volumes about the priorities of the individual making the argument.
nikster 14y ago
The US patent and IP system is completely perverted. The reason to have copyrights and patents is to fairly compensate the innovators (that part works really well). But there's an expiry on both patents and copyright - that's explicitly there so innovations can benefit the people, and to spur new innovation. And that's where the US system falls apart. Loopholes are found times and again and in the US once you have a copyright or patent, you basically have it forever. A monopoly, hurrah! That's just plain wrong. The US needs to fix its system. I imagine when that happens it will also make more sense for Pharma industry to spend more on R&D than they spend on marketing and bribing Doctors and healthcare providers and politicians. Really happy to hear Indian courts don't fall for this sort of crap. How can Disney have a copyright on Mickey Mouse? An absolute joke.
TheCondor 14y ago
Seems like there should be a penalty for evergreening patents like this without some measurable improvement in product quality. I might have different feelings about it if India just rejected the initial patent, but the reapsearch has been paid for, profits taken...

product50 14y ago

Looks to be a sponsored article from Novartis and the likes.

nhashem 14y ago

This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation. Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that." And what option does the pharmaceutical company have? Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly. Because healthcare payments are not functionally a government-controlled monopoly (ie. socialized healthcare) in the US, this doesn't happen. So Novartis can sell Gleevec for $75,000 in the US, because a healthcare provider will agree to pay and just bill it to private insurance companies, and those private insurance company will agree to pay and just increase their premiums on the customers, who probably won't notice because, assuming they have employer-provided health insurance, their employer won't take anything more out of their paycheck, but then say increased operational costs means nobody can get a raise. So US healthcare leads the way in innovation because device and pharmaceutical manufacturers can make a lot more money than in countries with socialized healthcare. So these companies make most of their profits in the US, and then they'll grumble and accept lower prices in every other country, because at that point it's just icing to them. After the profits made in the US, getting $2,500 from Indians for Gleevac is better than getting $0. The US is effectively subsidizing advanced healthcare for every other country in the world. This is pretty crappy, obviously, but this is a complex problem to solve. Because if you move to a cost-controlling system, then you will stifle legitimate innovation. Why jump through all our FDA clinical trial hurdles if there's no promise of a big payout at the end? Why invest in R&D without the protections of patent law to prevent your drugs from being trivially replicated? I'm not trying to say, "oh, those poor profits of the drug companies." I recognize this may not be a sympathetic argument. But it's likely to be tough to control costs and yet maintain R&D and innovation. Right now, every other country essentially gets the US to pay the bill for the innovation and they reap the benefits at a lower cost, but with US healthcare already consuming 1/6 of our economy, this isn't sustainable.

snippyhollow 14y ago
US firms are investing less in R&D relatively to their rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_leaders_in_terms_of_healthcare_revenue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Market_... than their French/UK (publicly-funded healthcare) counterparts. The US are not "subsidizing it for poor countries" more than other rich countries. The truth in the case you're making is not specific to healthcare and is that "research (private and public) of rich countries that can afford it" benefits poorer countries. So what, let's stop advancing science? We're all better off this way!

inDigiNeous 14y ago

Chemotherapy is a form therapy where the medicine companies heal the the patient off his money and then kill him.

mansigandhi 14y ago
Huh? Do you have an idea of how science and medicine works?
- inDigiNeous 14y ago
  Just wondering what this has to do with Hacker News. But anyway, check out: http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-never-works.html http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-ne... http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-medical-establishment/ http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-me... http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-chemotherapy-is-a-hoax.htm http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-ch... Just a few writings and articles speaking about the lie that is chemotherapy. I have an idea how medicine works, let me spell it out here for you: 1. Poison the foods (GMO, sugars, fats, overprocessed crap that is the idea of western food) 2. Sell medicine for people who eat this poisoned food 3. Profit! Now, this is _my_ idea. You are allowed to have your own idea about this.
  - gambiting 14y ago
    This "lie", as you call chemotherapy, has kept my dad alive for 5 more years than what the doctors were giving him when he was first diagnosed. Would he get cancer if he didn't eat sugars,fats and over processed food our western society eats? Maybe. But you don't know that. Instead, you are trying to neglect the obvious, which is the fact that chemotherapy is actually saving lives of people like my dad. I agree that we should improve the way we live our lives, eat healthier, exercise more etc etc.....but you can't bash companies making life saving drugs.
    - TheAnimus 14y ago

gambiting 14y ago

My father has been on Glivec for the last 7 years, and this is the only reason he is still alive - when he was diagnosed with GIST doctors told him he would have 2 years left at best, but decided to add him to clinical trials of Glivec for GIST patients. The whole treatment is paid for by our national health care, I believe it costs....$3000 per month, that's how much a single box of Glivec costs here and my dad has to take a pill every day so he gets a new box every month. Not really related, but I wanted to mention this, since some people really want to show Novartis as evil, and while they probably charge too much for their drugs in the US, their medicine actually saves lives, my dad being the best example of that.

tuananh 14y ago
i don't know about American but when it comes to health-related issues, people in my country tends not to bargain about the price. That's least of their worry as long as they can afford it.
userulluipeste 14y ago
Nobody has a problem that "medicine actually saves lives" - that's what medicine is supposed to do, isn't it? The problem is when that life-saving medicine becomes unavailable due to it's pricing, which means sheer death!
brazzy 14y ago
How exactly is extracting the maximum possible revenue from people for giving them something that saves their lives NOT evil?
- gambiting 14y ago
  As far as I know, companies are supposed to make profit,they are not charities. Especially if you are so large that you sell shares in company, then you have a LEGAL obligation to the shareholders to always take decisions that maximise profit over everything else(unless you can show that selling your product cheaper is going to bring more money to the company in the long run). This is not "evil" - this is just how these companies work. It's like what Steve Jobs said,when he was asked by Obama what would it take to bring his business back to US, out of China. And Steve said very correctly, that there is nothing he can do - if the production is cheaper in China, they have to go that route,since they have legal obligations to work in the best interest of their shareholders. (and I am not saying this is a good thing. This is just how this entire system works, and if you opened your own company, you would have to play by the same rules,no matter how noble you were. If you want this situation to change, change the system) The only way to combat this is to have a national health care system,that sets their own prices for drugs it buys from companies. If my country says that the maximum it can pay per box of Glivec is $3000, then Novartis can't do anything about it. Well, they could decide to not sell the drug at all, but they would rather have some money than none.

ofacup 14y ago

i've worked at novartis. they spend 3 times as much on marketing than research. that's what's wrong with the whole deal

nikster 14y ago
Kind of shocking but that's not even the biggest problem. The first problem is the money they spend on buying laws, aka bribes, aka "lobbying" as the USA likes to call it. Corruption in its finest form. That's why they get perpetual patents; The second problem - and I kind of assume that that falls under "marketing" expenses - is that they can basically bribe healthcare providers and doctors to use their products. Result: Most expensive health care system in the world, by a large margin.

p6v53as 14y ago

In other words americans partly pay for indians for drugs by having these patent laws.

userulluipeste 14y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5530662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5530662 "The issue the Indian court had with Gleevec patent application is that it only rearranged the molecule in a new crystal pattern" ...in other words the American patenting system is more corrupted than India's. Reading again my last written sentence I can not but awe - I never thought I might ever compare America with India and find something less corrupt in the last one!

areddy 14y ago

'Gleevec is under patent in the U.S., but not in India' This is a biased article, Novartis tried to gain one more patent for existing drug with slight modification. see 'Calling big pharma's bluff' http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/calling-big-pharmas-bluff/article4573890.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/calling-big-pharmas-blu...

scotty79 14y ago

> Rejecting the Gleevec patent application is not the only step that the Indian government has taken to circumvent patents on cancer drugs. It's not circumventing the patent. It's not granting the patent. People think that patent is some kind of innate natural right and if you manage to trick one country into giving you monopoly you are somehow in the right now and other countries that don't see the point of giving you similar monopoly are circumventing your sense of entitlement.

nodeless 14y ago
Very very well said.

smoyer 14y ago

It's not nearly the difference that it would appear ... Think about the per capita incomes of both countries and you'll find the drug is prohibitively expensive in both countries. If you look at it from the drug companies perspective; it's a case of maximizing their profits in both markets and competition is just one factor in doing so.

replicatorblog 14y ago

One point I haven't seen explained is why the Indian companies don't manufacture the drug based on the molecule described in the expired patent. If what the courts are saying is true and the new patent covering crystallization is trivial, the expired patent should be just as effective and free to use? If it's not as effective, that seems to make the case for the new Novartis patent.

anuraj 14y ago
Many Indian companies including Cipla,Natco and Sun Pharma has been manufacturing generic versions for the last 10 years or so and are selling at a fraction of the price. For your information, India is the largest generic drug producer globally. http://www.indiamart.com/moderntimes/imatinib-mesylate-capsules.html http://www.indiamart.com/moderntimes/imatinib-mesylate-capsu...

sageikosa 14y ago

Because prices are determined by what the market will bear? I thought that was the stock answer for any pricing question.

gosub 14y ago

Is US healthcare waiting to be disrupted?

pc86 14y ago

All things being equal, stuff is always going to be more expensive in the US than in India. If you're complaining about $70,000 here v. $2,500 there, I'm going to assume you're charging the same for your services here as someone is in India, right? Right?

snarfy 14y ago

Please tell me how charging $50,000/yr for 30 year old dimethyl fumarate (BG-12/tecfidera) for the treatment of multiple sclerosis is due to innovation. It shouldn't cost more than aspirin. The only reason they are charging that much is because that's how much all other MS medications cost. Oligopoly, it's like a monopoly, only legal.

refurb 14y ago
Because someone has to pay for the phase 3 clinical trials to actually prove that it's safe and that it works? That doesn't come cheap. If Biogen charged only the price of aspirin, they would never recoup their R&D costs, let alone make a profit.
- visarga 14y ago
  Then maybe we should find a way to make trials cheaper. Why does it cost one billion dollars to bring a new drug to market? That could drastically limit the innovation.
  - refurb 14y ago
    You need to work with the FDA on that one, they are the ones that set the trial requirements. It all comes down to risk-reward. Even though the FDA has very rigorous efficacy and safety standards, drugs still get through that kill people. If you want to make drug approvals cheaper, then you have to be willing to put up with a higher risk of drugs getting through that shouldn't have.

ktzar 14y ago

Lawers

Nano2rad 14y ago

This article does not say why the Gleevec patent was rejected, maybe it was not the purpose of the article. Indian companies did not invest in clinical trials, even in the discovery of the molecule. They are just using the disclosures. Even if there is compulsory licencing there should be a cost, about 20 million dollars would be okay based on the average research cost and population of India. I dont believe in compulsory licencing but believe in price control. Let those patent holder companies have exclusive rights but govt should have the right to determine the price based on the purchasing power of the people. The better option of course is govt or the insurance companies negotiate with patent holder. But in India there is no health insurance run by govt that addresses the real price of drugs. Most of the insurance for poor is like a fixed amount like Rs. 30 thousand which does not even cover 10 days in hospital. The price control is supposed to make the cost of healthcare down, but there is no control of the cost of surgical procedures.

zwieback 14y ago

Couldn't healthcare tourism to India solve some of this problem? It's already happening on a smaller scale in Mexico.

snambi 14y ago

Nice post. In USA employers pay the medical bills through insurance companies. In india either government pays the bill or the patient. So, they cannot afford $70,000 bill. So the government takes the decision that is beneficial to itself and patients. In US the pharma companies and insurance companies decide what is the price.

3am 14y ago

The first comment after the article ends the discussion: "This article is misleading from the beginning. India did not refuse to issue a patent for Gleevec, it refused to extend the patent Gleevec already had, based on merely superficial changes to the formula, a practice known as "evergreening", which pharmaceutical companies use to extend the monopoly on their medications as long as possible." That is completely accurate, and more informative that the article in fewer words.

baldfat 14y ago

So explain to my dying son why his cancer Osteosarcoma has a flat line of 15% survival rate for the past 30 years? WHY IS THERE NOT ONE NEW PEDIATRIC CHEMOTHERAPY IN THE PAST @) YEARS INTRODUCED IN AMERICA?

baldfat 14y ago
20 Years