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from the Good-news-for-cross-border-insulin-shoppers dept.
If you're into going to Canada for lower drug prices, things should get even better after the middle of next year. Canada is going to be changing the way it calculates the price of medication, which will lower costs. Canada can do this because, unlike the USA, Canadian regulators are allowed to determine when a patent monopoly is being abused and act accordingly.
Canada Promises to Save Billions with Tweaks to Patent Drug System:
Canadians can expect to pay less for prescription drugs as early as next summer
The federal government is making changes to the way it will evaluate new drug prices, a tweak it says will save Canadians billions over the next 10 years.
On Friday, the government released changes to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, first set up in 1987 as a shield against what the government calls "excessive prices," set to come into force next July.
"The [board] relies on outdated regulatory tools and information that foreign medicine pricing authorities updated years ago. As a result, list prices for patented medicines in Canada are now among the highest in the world," notes a release from Health Canada.
Under the new regulations, the board will no longer compare prices with the United States and Switzerland, which have some of the world's highest drug prices, when figuring out what companies are allowed to charge. It will still compare drug prices to France, Germany and Italy, and has added Japan, Spain, Norway, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands to the list.
The board will also now have to consider a drug's "value to and financial impact on consumers in the health system" when determining if a price is excessive.
"These bold reforms will both make prescription drugs more affordable and accessible for all Canadians saving them an estimated $13 billion in the next decade and lay the foundation for national pharmacare," the federal health agency said in a statement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:21AM (8 children)
Then maybe the US should stop treating people's health and lives as profit-driven business. That's what civilized societies do.
But who am I kidding. That will never happen. The entire US founding principles are based on darwinism and absolutism of individial rights above anything, including the common good.
The US is not a civilized country. It is very advanced, very sophisticated barbarism.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 10 2019, @02:12AM (7 children)
Yeah, you keep thinking that. And then you watch what happens when we put domestic price controls in. The money has to come from somewhere or the drugs don't get created; even altruistic scientists want to eat. Right now it's coming mostly from us. What's going to happen when that well dries up?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedGreen on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:18AM (2 children)
"The money has to come from somewhere or the drugs don't get created"
The money will come from where it always has. Either a tax deduction for the research pr using the government funded research that ends up used for the private profit. Usually given to the companies who are so hard done by, the poor obscenely profitable companies, so hard done by all the time... Please give them more money and power they deserve it after all the compassion they have shown for the people who made them rich.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:58AM (1 child)
Yeah, no. The rate of new drug creation (even excluding patent evergreening attempts) has massively outpaced everywhere else in the world here in the US because of private money paying so many people to work on them. The state can not match that. Its pockets are not deep enough.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:40PM
So anyone buying the new version (which is the old version with a new name ) is being charged 20x the price for nothing. But Americans don't care - their insurance will pay for it. Public insurance plans do care, so the off-label use continues, and the patent can safely be ignored because of prior art.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimtee on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:44AM (3 children)
Maybe they will have to stop spending twice as much on advertising as they do on research.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:54AM (1 child)
That would be nice, yes. I certainly don't want anyone telling my customers "ask your coder about our TLS library". It'd be right fucking annoying and I'd refuse to use it out of spite.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by juggs on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:43PM
So you think the person best placed to choose which medicine to take is the customer i.e. the end user / the patient?
What exactly are they basing that decision on? Probably advertising feel good force fed to them and some partial at best medical advice websites they found online. Websites funded by who and to what end? You can be sure the majority of Jo Schmo users visiting those sites won't research the structure or funding of those sites, even if such information is discoverable.
This goes hand in hand with the customer / end user / patient self diagnosing their issues based on the exact same sources of information with perhaps a bit of word of mouth from people they know.
It's really not a good situation as people tend to "google" their symptoms - which in most instances will bring up a whole raft of possible ailments that could produce those symptoms. Which one they go on to decide is afflicting them is going to be based on the influences identified above. Then they go see their MD and insist on medicine X be prescribed.
Ideally you'd visit medical professionals to obtain an actual definitive diagnosis. Then discuss the most effective course of treatment with them. This of course relies on said medical professionals being completely objective and unswayed by the vast finances swirling around their industry thanks to the big pharma companies. I'm sure some are.
(Score: 2, Informative) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:48PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.