how's the pharmaceutical industry south of the border?.........dagone............

Ricboff · Sep 21, 2015

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/21/drug-goes-from-1350-a-tablet-to-750-overnight.html

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.
The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?" said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use "alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy."

wow. ......................seriously what the hell is going on?

MantisToboggan · Sep 21, 2015

Ricboff said:
wow. ......................seriously what the hell is going on?

Martin Shkreli is going on. Simple as that.

Ricboff · Sep 24, 2015

how so? what has to be done to stop this?

consistent media exposure of this horrific ripping off of Americans should force a resolution ...i would think.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/...or-cancer-drugs-academic-study/?intcmp=hphz02

[h=1]Americans overpaying hugely for cancer drugs, academic study finds[/h]Americans are paying way over the odds for some modern cancer drugs, with pharmaceutical companies charging up to 600 times what the medicines cost to make, according to an independent academic study.
The United States also pays more than double the price charged in Europe for these drugs - so-called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), a potent class of cancer pills with fewer side effects than chemotherapy.
The analysis by pharmacologist Andrew Hill of Britain's University of Liverpool, who will present his findings at the Sept. 25-29 European Cancer Congress in Vienna, is likely to fuel a growing storm over U.S. drug costs.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's declared aim to lower the cost of prescription drugs by ending what her campaign describes as "excessive profiteering" triggered a sell-off in drug stocks this week.
Hill told Reuters he had shared his work on the cost of producing TKIs with the World Health Organization (WHO), which is keen to add such treatments to its list of medicines deemed essential for a basic healthcare system. WHO officials have used the findings in determining that the drugs can be made at low cost, he said.
The first such TKI was added to the WHO's latest draft Essential Medicines List earlier this year.

Several widely-used TKIs are expected to become available as generics within the next five years, as patents expire. Hill calculated that large-scale production could achieve treatment prices in the range of $159 to $4,022 per person a year, against current U.S. prices of around $75,000 to over $100,000.
"It shows there is a lot of scope for prices to come down," he said. "There has to be some middle ground between the prices that companies are charging, which may not even be cost-effective by the standards set by some healthcare authorities, and the actual production cost."
RESEARCH COSTS
Drug companies argue that they need to make decent profits to pay for the billions of dollars needed for drug research. Many companies also have extensive low-cost or even free access schemes for patients who cannot afford their medicines.
But the high prices charged for modern drugs is generating increasing push-back from healthcare providers, patients and some doctors.
Hill used Indian government data on the cost of pharmaceutical ingredients and allowed for a 50-percent profit margin - but no money for investment in research - to work out the costs of producing certain drugs.
On this basis, he found that Novartis' leukaemia drug Glivec actually cost $159 for a year's treatment, against the $106,000 charged in the United States.
Roche's Tarceva for lung cancer cost $236, against a U.S. price of $79,000, and Novartis' Tykerb cost $4,000 against a price of $74,000.
In all these cases the U.S. cost was far above that charged in certain western European countries, where Glivec costs approximately $29,000-35,000, Tarceva $26,000-29,000 and Tykerb around $35,000, Hill reported.
Roche declined to comment. Novartis said it had no immediate response.
The issue is not unique to cancer drugs. Earlier this month, for example, Amgen launched its new injectable cholesterol drug Repatha in Europe at around half the U.S. price.
"Why should the U.S. bear this huge burden cost? It is not as if the GDP of the United States is so much higher than that of European counties, but they just seem to pay these big premiums," Hill said.
The future pricing of TKIs could also have major implications for developing countries, Hill believes, since mass production could open the way to widespread cancer treatment in the same way that cheap generic drugs helped fight HIV/AIDS.

JohnnyMac · Sep 24, 2015

We have the greatest health care system in the world!

How dare you criticize the job creators!

Ricboff · Sep 25, 2015

is the party over for healthcare?.......if so, was a marvelous run...

PatsFan1283 · Sep 28, 2015

Seems like the logical conclusion to having everyone take meds and the gov't pay for the lions share of it.

Health care industry will be fine as long as the gov't is backing them up. It's a match made in heaven at the expense of the taxpayers.

I remember when Obamacare first passed and people were saying it would cripple the insurance companies. Why would they be hurt? Getting to rape taxpayers is great for their bottom line.

PatsFan1283 · Sep 28, 2015

Mantis Toboggan said:
Martin Shkreli is going on. Simple as that.

Atleast he is enjoying being a billionaire in his early 30s and all that comes with it....

Shkreli is a League of Legends player who goes by the name "Cerebral" and began expressing interest in purchasing an eSports team in 2014.[SUP][34][/SUP] In May Enemy eSports announced that they had rejected a $1.2 million offer from Shkreli.[SUP][35][/SUP] Eventually he founded his own team, Odyssey eSports, and aimed to qualify for the 2015 North American League of Legends Challenger Series. The team lost to Cloud9 Tempest in the qualifying tournament and failed to qualify. In August, Odyssey merged with Imagine, with Shkreli becoming Chairman of the team. During the merger the team also acquired the Dota 2 team Leviathan.[SUP][36][/SUP][SUP][37][/SUP]