That Guy Who Price-Gouged AIDS Patients Did It to Kids with Kidney Disease

[The Brain]

Pharma should be a state industry, so that's not much of an objection.

Yup. Healthcare and education should be non-for-profit.

Sorry, you guys lost the Cold War.

[Ideologue]

Pharma should be a state industry, so that's not much of an objection.

I believe it is in Canada.  We probably can't hope to match their prodigious output of world-changing drugs though.

It isn't, but I imagine you think a comparison of two countries, one of which has less than 1/10th the people and is devoid of the established infrastructure built up over a century of pharmaceutical research, is a good one?

[Fate]

Pharma should be a state industry, so that's not much of an objection.

Yup. Healthcare and education should be non-for-profit.

Law should be not-for-profit as well.

[Barrister]

Pharma should be a state industry, so that's not much of an objection.

I believe it is in Canada.  We probably can't hope to match their prodigious output of world-changing drugs though.

You should ask the good people at the Canadian pharmacy industry group about how many "world-changing drugs" are invented in Canada.

http://canadapharma.org/

[Ideologue]

Pharma should be a state industry, so that's not much of an objection.

Yup. Healthcare and education should be non-for-profit.

Law should be not-for-profit as well.

I agree.

[Malthus]

Pharma should be a state industry, so that's not much of an objection.

I believe it is in Canada.  We probably can't hope to match their prodigious output of world-changing drugs though.

No, it isn't. Drugs are very much a "for profit" capitalist industry in Canada.

Patented drug prices are subject to a price control mechanism. However, in reality, this mechanism has less and less relevance to actual drug pricing, because a large part of the market is covered by public insurance reimbursement - and the public insurers use their awesome bargaining power to muscle companies into giving them big discounts.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Sure, that aspect seems to be true if you want a stateside supply of the drug. But there's no reason a competitor couldn't buy a boat load of the drug from Europe for cheap and use that to reverse engineer the product.

The major hurdle would be R&D, regulatory approval, manufacturing design and development, regulatory approval of manufacturing, production, and packaging/distribution.

Again, who determines what the price should be?

The issue Dguller is referring to is the impossibility of actually getting regulatory approval for a generic.  The FDA requires you to use actual, approved drugs in efficacy trials.  They do not require anyone to actually sell you those drugs.  Since Turing has set up a sole-source distribution chain, they can just tell anyone trying to create a competing generic to get fucked.

Now, the FTC may see things differently.

[Fate]

Sure, that aspect seems to be true if you want a stateside supply of the drug. But there's no reason a competitor couldn't buy a boat load of the drug from Europe for cheap and use that to reverse engineer the product.

The major hurdle would be R&D, regulatory approval, manufacturing design and development, regulatory approval of manufacturing, production, and packaging/distribution.

Again, who determines what the price should be?

The issue Dguller is referring to is the impossibility of actually getting regulatory approval for a generic.  The FDA requires you to use actual, approved drugs in efficacy trials.  They do not require anyone to actually sell you those drugs.  Since Turing has set up a sole-source distribution chain, they can just tell anyone trying to create a competing generic to get fucked.

Now, the FTC may see things differently.

Is there any evidence that this has actually happened in this case? Are you sure you can't base the effiacy trial from an approved European producer?

The drug was available via wholesale distribution for decades (until 9/11/2015) and no other pharmaceutical companies opted to go through the regulatory burden of obtaining the ability to produce this unprofitable drug. Let's kill all of the lawyers and lower the barrier to entry so that we don't end up forcing the single remaning manufacturer to act as a charity.

[Admiral Yi]

It isn't, but I imagine you think a comparison of two countries, one of which has less than 1/10th the people and is devoid of the established infrastructure built up over a century of pharmaceutical research, is a good one?

You should imagine I think Canada should produce 1/10 the new drugs the US does, everything else being equal.

I tend to see the absence of "established infrastructure" support for my point.  In the absence of a profit motive the tendency will be to free ride.

[Malthus]

It isn't, but I imagine you think a comparison of two countries, one of which has less than 1/10th the people and is devoid of the established infrastructure built up over a century of pharmaceutical research, is a good one?

You should imagine I think Canada should produce 1/10 the new drugs the US does, everything else being equal.

I tend to see the absence of "established infrastructure" support for my point.  In the absence of a profit motive the tendency will be to free ride.

Once again, pharma is for-profit in Canada.

[The Brain]

You didn't add an eh so it didn't count.

[garbon]

Patented drug prices are subject to a price control mechanism. However, in reality, this mechanism has less and less relevance to actual drug pricing, because a large part of the market is covered by public insurance reimbursement - and the public insurers use their awesome bargaining power to muscle companies into giving them big discounts.

Which just means there is a lot of free ridership off of markets like the US where companies stand to make sizable profits.

After all, if all markets were like the UK - there would certainly be little incentive to be quick to innovate in say the biologic space given that the NHS wasn't really too keen on footing the bill until much cheaper biosimilars became available.

[crazy canuck]

It isn't, but I imagine you think a comparison of two countries, one of which has less than 1/10th the people and is devoid of the established infrastructure built up over a century of pharmaceutical research, is a good one?

You should imagine I think Canada should produce 1/10 the new drugs the US does, everything else being equal.

I tend to see the absence of "established infrastructure" support for my point.  In the absence of a profit motive the tendency will be to free ride.

Once again, pharma is for-profit in Canada.

Its funny because voters like Yi reject the Canadian health care model and apparently have no idea what they are talking about.

[crazy canuck]

Patented drug prices are subject to a price control mechanism. However, in reality, this mechanism has less and less relevance to actual drug pricing, because a large part of the market is covered by public insurance reimbursement - and the public insurers use their awesome bargaining power to muscle companies into giving them big discounts.

Which just means there is a lot of free ridership off of markets like the US where companies stand to make sizable profits.

No, it means that if purchasers of the drugs were more intelligent about bargaining with the pharma companies the price would reflect that fact.  Fate asked the right question.  Who determines the price?  The willing purchaser does.  Canadian provinces are just smarter about driving hard bargains with all drug companies.

[garbon]

Patented drug prices are subject to a price control mechanism. However, in reality, this mechanism has less and less relevance to actual drug pricing, because a large part of the market is covered by public insurance reimbursement - and the public insurers use their awesome bargaining power to muscle companies into giving them big discounts.

Which just means there is a lot of free ridership off of markets like the US where companies stand to make sizable profits.

No, it means that if purchasers of the drugs were more intelligent about bargaining with the pharma companies the price would reflect that fact.  Fate asked the right question.  Who determines the price?  The willing purchaser does.  Canadian provinces are just smarter about driving hard bargains with all drug companies.

Yeah because spending a lot of capital on innovative research would be a good move for pharma companies if their profit margins were sharply curtailed across the globe.