4 ms·

Their R&D budgets are still pretty huge. And how exactly do you compete when your competitors can clone your product with ease? And the NHS spends < 10% of dr

Their R&D budgets are still pretty huge. And how exactly do you compete when your competitors can clone your product with ease? And the NHS spends < 10% of drugs, most of which are already available as generics, so there is not a lot of scope for cost reduction. I'm not saying that aren't improvements that can be made, but people need to wake up and realise that there are no simple answers.

Create 14y ago
a substantial part of their R&D budget is "market development"
wnight 14y ago
Their costs would have been paid for the R&D so it wouldn't be their drug being ripped off, it w would be our drug being second sourced. Also, their costs would be much lower because we'd be paying for the clinical trials and there wouldn't be marketing costs.
- grandinj 14y ago
  Ah, so basically you are saying we should shift the entire cost burden of creating new drugs from the free market to the government. Glad to have that cleared up.
  - wnight 14y ago
    Absolutely. So glad you understand. It hasn't been a free market since we created the FDA (and I'm not looking to get rid of it), and with patents and advertising law, etc, it's never going to be free. So why don't we change the accounting? Instead of making drugs companies advertise and exploit to be able to pay the regulatory costs, and R&D, etc, why not recognize that they create drugs for us and this is our hurdle - not theirs. We want the product, so we shouldn't dump costs on the drug companies and pretend we've dealt with them. So we should pay for the regulatory testing. 100%. But that leaves an inventive to push expensive and unneeded or dangerous drugs through the system because they don't pay and yet get rewarded. So we need to make these our drugs - by paying for the R&D up front, so that there's no need to game our own system. Now there's no need for secrecy so there's no need for patents to reward letting it go, and everything gets simpler again. When you strip the patents, the marketing, and the legal games, our drugs would get a lot cheaper and more reliable. We'd still be paying for all, maybe even more, tests, but at least we wouldn't have to trust someone whose motive clearly (and reasonably in this system) is to rush to market.
    - grandinj 14y ago
      Yes, because government agencies are well known for - cost efficiency - openness to exploring new avenues of research - obeying their own regulatory regimes It'll certainly reduce some gaming of the current system, but I can't see how this will materially improve the situation as a whole.
DanBC 14y ago
Yes. Medication compliance (people taking meds correctly) is a severe problem. The UK spends about £9bn on medication, and about half of that is wasted by non-compliance. It's not the severity of the illness; many organ transplants fail because of med non-compliance. It's not the lack of cost of the meds; figures are similar in the US. Getting patients to take meds correctly is a problem waiting for a solution, and there's money to be made from it.

Create 14y ago

a substantial part of their R&D budget is "market development"

wnight 14y ago

Their costs would have been paid for the R&D so it wouldn't be their drug being ripped off, it w would be our drug being second sourced. Also, their costs would be much lower because we'd be paying for the clinical trials and there wouldn't be marketing costs.

grandinj 14y ago
Ah, so basically you are saying we should shift the entire cost burden of creating new drugs from the free market to the government. Glad to have that cleared up.
- wnight 14y ago
  Absolutely. So glad you understand. It hasn't been a free market since we created the FDA (and I'm not looking to get rid of it), and with patents and advertising law, etc, it's never going to be free. So why don't we change the accounting? Instead of making drugs companies advertise and exploit to be able to pay the regulatory costs, and R&D, etc, why not recognize that they create drugs for us and this is our hurdle - not theirs. We want the product, so we shouldn't dump costs on the drug companies and pretend we've dealt with them. So we should pay for the regulatory testing. 100%. But that leaves an inventive to push expensive and unneeded or dangerous drugs through the system because they don't pay and yet get rewarded. So we need to make these our drugs - by paying for the R&D up front, so that there's no need to game our own system. Now there's no need for secrecy so there's no need for patents to reward letting it go, and everything gets simpler again. When you strip the patents, the marketing, and the legal games, our drugs would get a lot cheaper and more reliable. We'd still be paying for all, maybe even more, tests, but at least we wouldn't have to trust someone whose motive clearly (and reasonably in this system) is to rush to market.
  - grandinj 14y ago
    Yes, because government agencies are well known for - cost efficiency - openness to exploring new avenues of research - obeying their own regulatory regimes It'll certainly reduce some gaming of the current system, but I can't see how this will materially improve the situation as a whole.

DanBC 14y ago

Yes. Medication compliance (people taking meds correctly) is a severe problem. The UK spends about £9bn on medication, and about half of that is wasted by non-compliance. It's not the severity of the illness; many organ transplants fail because of med non-compliance. It's not the lack of cost of the meds; figures are similar in the US. Getting patients to take meds correctly is a problem waiting for a solution, and there's money to be made from it.