SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It has the same active ingredient, so it should work the same, but if someone says 'I want Cheerios, not Walmart-os', then why should they not get what they're paying for? (David Maris, pharmaceuticals analyst at Wells Fargo, as quoted in Staying Power, David Crow, Financial Times [Log in required], Aug 22.
Discovering a drug and bringing it to market can take more than 10 years and costs on average $2.6bn per medicine. Typically around five to seven years after, the exclusive rights on the discovery expire, and generic copycat versions quickly flood the market. Prices are slashed to super-cheap, and then for all time and eternity, society benefits greatly. Or, in the words of Pfizer's CEO Ian Read during an investor call: "The price of medicines drop significantly once the patent expires... Today, about nine out of ten prescriptions in the US offer generic drugs, which lead to significantly reduced costs in the healthcare system."
A recent Financial Times analysis doesn't completely agree though. Prices of branded medicines aren't slashed once the patent expires. They actually often sharply increase.
Before companies get to that phase however, a whole slew of other tactics have been used to maintain exclusivity. Many make small changes to a drug, then renew the patent. This is known as evergreening. Others "pay for delay" -- offering financial incentives to the generics producers to bring their alternatives to market more slowly. And once the generics get to market, pharma companies change tactics by attempting to stop patients, doctors and pharmacists from switching.
The end result is price differences between generics and brand medicines which are somewhat strange for a free market: Wellbutrin (bupropion, 150 mg) [Valeant]: $36 per pill versus $0.46 for the generic [bupropion]; Lipitor (atorvastatin 20mg) [Pfizer] 10.49 versus 0.13, Abmien (zolpidem 5mg) [Sanofi] 15.52 versus 0.02, Prozac (fluoxetine 20mg) [Eli Lilly] 11.39 versus 0.03, Xanax (alprazolam 1mg) [Pfizer] 8.14 versus 0.05 and Sarafem (fluoxetine 20mg) [Allergan] $15.98 versus $0.03 per pill.
There must be lot of people who prefer Cheerios over Walmart-os.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:39PM
I would recommend according to sources on the net to be on the look out for shape shifting aliens disguised as humans, who, like the hybrid humans+aliens, must consume human flesh to maintain their human appearance.
human flesh is being found more and more in common food today,
there exists a certain barrier in normal, everyday thought which hides the reality of these creatures and their hybrids along with the smell and taste of human flesh in common food as well as the scent of these creatures. they all smell the same. while the aliens and hybrids are safe within their homes, they prepare higher concentrates of human flesh in food because they can get away with it and unless you're in the right state of mind, you wouldn't smell the human flesh in the food. They use some type of masking agent so you normally can't smell the taint. They have been studying us for years upon years and much of what you hear coming from government/military experiments are just a preview of things to come.
a certain modification to the mind can bring the typical human into a different frame of mind where these... "things" can be smelt/detected. there are other effects which follow, too, but the frame of mind of the individual would often be too flooded with different events occurring within and outside of the human mind/body.
Never trust a mason or someone giving you food/drink out of the blue, even if you've known these people for your entire life. always buy food at random, never return to the same product more than # of dice rolls. Always buy food and drink in sealed containers. Look for typical "Illuminati/occult" symbols and don't purchase from these companies.
Things are not what they appear to be on Earth, unless you are enabled to really see. Then you'll probably wish you never had. (like in The Matrix where the delicious fake steak is being consumed and a deal struck)