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California considers selling its own generic prescription drugs:
California could become the first state to introduce its own brand of generic prescription drugs in an effort to drag down stratospheric healthcare costs. The plan for state-branded drugs is part of California Gov. Gavin Newsom's budget proposal, which he is expected to unveil Friday, January 10.
"A trip to the doctor's office, pharmacy or hospital shouldn't cost a month's pay," Newsom said in a statement. "The cost of healthcare is just too damn high, and California is fighting back." A plan for California to sell its own drugs would "take the power out of the hands of greedy pharmaceutical companies," Newsom said, according to the Associated Press.
Under the plan, the state would contract with one or more generic drug companies, which would manufacture select prescription drugs under a state-owned label, according to an overview of the plan reported by the Los Angeles Times. Those state generics would presumably be offered to Californians at a lower price than current generics, which could spark more competitive pricing in the market overall.
So far, much of the plan's details are unclear, though, including which drugs might be sold and how much money they could save residents and the state.
The conceptual plan so far has garnered both praise and skepticism from health industry experts.
Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California, told the Associated Press that "Consumers would directly benefit if California contracted on its own to manufacture much-needed generic medications like insulin—a drug that has been around for a century yet the price has gone up over tenfold in the last few decades."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:12AM (34 children)
I'm all about added players, as long as they are required by law to operate at a reasonable profit. If they're not it's no different than a big corporation selling at a loss until all their competition is starved out. Even less competitors than we have now is something we most certainly do not want. Especially if the last one standing is governmental.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:36AM (18 children)
I would rather end up with a broken government option than a broken private option that creates billionaires living off the real suffering and death of other citizens. Fuck those billionaires, and all the c-suite hell bound scum in Big Pharma. Fuck them, Fuck them, Fuck them with a million mile wide Saguaro cactus up the ass sideways.
Reasonable profit? Just what is that again? Is it cultural? It seems to me that Capitalist sociopaths feel that ever increasing levels of profit are the only option. Was it reasonable for that hell bound cunt of a woman to raise Epipens to $600 a fucking pack? Is is reasonable for some pharma costs to be thousands of times what it is in Cuba? Heck, just check Canada, Mexico, Peru, and about any other country, and you will see just how "reasonable" US pharma costs are. Canadians are afraid of a population nearly 10 times as big as they are competing with them to buy their affordable medication :)
Selling at a loss? You've got to be fucking kidding me. The whole point of this government option is to recoup the expenses of producing the generics, and since their entertaining the corrupt clusterfuck of government contracts, there will be profits to private corporations manufacturing the generics.
No. We don't need to require shit by law in regards to profits. Not when we're contracting private companies to do it. They do that all on their own just fine. So reasonable profit will be built in.
What is fucked up, is this is a half measure again. Only generics. Not to mention, there is no real reason to believe that unreasonably high and abusive profits won't be found somehow in the government contracts. The rent seekers/parasites will still be vying for position. It won't be as bad as right now, but right now is hilariously fucked. We might have a pill be 5x what it actually costs to produce under the government system, but that is quantifiably better than 100x.
I'm actually for California to refuse to acknowledge all pharma patents, and to contract with any private corporation they want to produce our medicine. Profit does not belong in medicine anyways, and it sure as fuck has not benefited medicine.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:42AM (14 children)
You people are nuts. All you have to do is negotiate and offer to... wait for it... pay cash. The healthcare providers don't like dealing with insurance either, so add a 2x-1000x upcharge as a negotiation point. Oh wait, you already gave away your hundreds of thousands of dollars to the insurance company you supposedly hate, now you want to punish everyone smart enough to not get scammed like you. SMH.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Tuesday January 14 2020, @06:56AM (13 children)
Cash don't work for pills. I've never been to a pharmacy where I could negotiate $2000 down to $400.
Come back with an actual fucking point about pills please.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @07:19AM (9 children)
I've never seen pills that were a good idea, but here you go: http://selfpaypatient.com/category/prescription-drugs/ [selfpaypatient.com]
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday January 14 2020, @03:01PM (5 children)
So companies can sell "expensive" drugs cheaply, but raise the rates exponentially when insurance is involved? I'm no fan of big government but now is the time to step in. You can't sell the same product to different people with wildly different prices. Having insurance companies pay ridiculous sums just means people end up paying more in premiums.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @03:11PM (2 children)
The prices you see your insurance pay on your bill are not what they actually pay. And yes, you can sell the same thing to different people for different prices. If the government steps in (even more) you will see prices rise more and quality/usefulness drop.
Look at college in the US. Only a generation ago you could work a crappy summer job, pay yourself through college, and get a very valuable degree. Then the government got involved. Now people are in debt for half their lives for worthless degrees. Governments take something cheap and useful and turn it into something expensive and worthless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:04PM (1 child)
Pull another one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:46PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargemaster [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:41PM (1 child)
Certainly you can. That is exactly what insurance does: Insurance pays less because they can theoretically offer up more customers than an organization can scrounge up on its own. The seller (drugstore, physician, hospital, whatever) takes the deal and accepts lower than 'street price' in order to get a greater volume of business. Better two patients paying $4 each than making only one sale at $6. When the seller starts offering those on the street lower rates than the insurance pays the insurance company can come back and say, "hey, we negotiated a discount for increased volume. Time to pay us back for being fraudulent with us." That's the way the system works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:35PM
Lol, peak capitalist mindset. Clue is the lack of critical thinking and use of incredibly simple rationale.
Gee doc, I never thought about it like that! Now slide me a pack of manly Marlboros!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday January 14 2020, @08:40PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:22PM (1 child)
You've got a mind-boggling level of ignorance and must have lived a (medically) incredibly sheltered life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @11:47PM
Actually, I've got a PhD in pharmacology. These people have no idea wtf they are doing and standards are extremely low, I'd even say profoundly stupid.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:53AM (2 children)
Two options are possible, both of which are in use by countries outside the US, the government declares certain critical drugs to be generic and buys them from the cheapest source, popular in places like Africa and Asia where the government can't afford to pay $1,000 per patient to deal with a TB epidemic, and the reverse-auction model where the government tells the pharma companies that they're going to be paid $xM for the year for their drugs, take it or leave it. Both of those keep drug prices down to very manageable levels by limiting the greed of the pharma companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:39PM (1 child)
Can you be more specific. The FDA does have drug purity standards. Are you saying that the chemicals aren't tested for purity at the lab (ie: with Spectroscopy, NMR, etc...)? What part of the process is flawed and how?
Thanks.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday January 17 2020, @07:25AM
Are you replying to the right message? My comment was about governments putting limits on pharma companies' abilities to profit off critical medicines, while your comment is about quality control.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:47AM (2 children)
And you think the government doesn't already do the same? You really don't look too hard at the politicians you vote for, do you? Politics is one of the quickest ways to become a millionaire; and on a salary with which it should not be possible.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by meustrus on Tuesday January 14 2020, @02:51PM (1 child)
Give the guy a break. edIII is not personally responsible for the corruption of politicians. Chewing out the voting population one person at a time is not going to change anything.
Though I imagine it makes you feel better about the lizard person you almost certainly voted for.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:48AM
I voted for the stoner dude just on the chance it might help throw a monkey wrench in things. Normally I vote for whoever looks like they'll bring about a revolution quicker.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:48AM
Half a percent of a billion is still five million shmuckers. I think most would consider that a pretty reasonable net profit.
- D
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:07AM (9 children)
Agreed.
$1/year after paying everything fair and square is a reasonable profit for an entity that has (or should have) the public interest above all.
It can be done and done nicely: see the history of the Golden Gate Bridge [wikipedia.org], a project done under budget and ahead of schedule. Which barely 'survives financialy', and yet is one of the wonders of the modern engineering and brings heck of a lot of value for the bay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:51AM (8 children)
You're going full retard, culo. If drug companies make less money they spend less money on research and more people die of things that would have been cured. And cutting the profit out of the drug trade means no more drug companies doing research of any kind.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:02AM (7 children)
You are coming as an idiot on this one - once their patent expired (and nobody suggested California intends to break the patent protection), competition should guarantee low profits to be made in generics.
And yet:
1. Martin Shkreli [wikipedia.org]
2. an 10ml insulin dose costs between $2.28 and $6.16 to produce [businessinsider.com] (with the later being modified for absorption times), yet they are sold at prices that can get to $275 [businessinsider.com.au] in US. And this in spite of competition theoretically existing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:23AM (3 children)
To produce? Sure. To have the knowledge and means to produce in large quantities? Not even fucking close. Insulin is not a simple to produce substance.
Mostly it's evergreening though. Yeah, that drug you thought was ancient and long out of patent is a slightly altered version still under patent.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:05AM (2 children)
Do you know what "asset amortization costs" mean? It means costs to be deducted over time from the value of those "means of production in large quantities" that were incurred when those were bought/built. As such, they are included in the production cost; and with these already included, the value of an insulin dose doesn't get over $6.50.
Neither any mobile phone is a simple to produce gizmo - and yet...
So, what in the "costs between $2.28 and $6.16" fails your understanding?
Or are you implying the rest of $270 is required to cover the expenses of research for the "how to produce insulin with only $6 bucks"?
---
Buddy, trying to prove yourself right, you sound more idiotic with each new attempt.
Even more tragic as the position you defend is just the regurgitated "without pharma profits, the humanity will not discover new drugs" brain-wash that was fed to you and you accepted without even thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:52PM
No but it might be required to pay the expenses of the 50 other drugs a manufacturer takes into the study process that never go anywhere.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:19PM
Check the methodology on the shit you cited. That is not in fact the case. It only covers imported materials cost and manufacturing cost.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:24AM (2 children)
Regardless, unless you want useful new drugs to cost tens of thousands of bucks per pill, quit bitching about spreading the cost across all the other drugs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:38PM (1 child)
Can you stop being an idiot for maybe one week? It might be easier to not post, but being such a self-made success I'm sure you take pride in self improvement, even if it means taking a tough look at yourself. Right?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:14PM
I'm sorry, was there a refutation in that troll somewhere? Let me double check... Nope, just insults because you got nuthin.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 14 2020, @05:22PM (3 children)
I could be wrong, but I suspect that they could operate at a reasonable prophet and still seriously undercut Big Pharma on prices.
If not, then what really is making drugs so expensive?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:53AM (2 children)
Failed attempts to find a new drug for $X. If you want the drug companies to keep trying to find ways to fix things, you gotta pay.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 15 2020, @03:00PM (1 child)
Drug companies spend way more on advertising than on R&D. Most drug developments and advancements come from NIH research -- paid by tax dollars.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:16PM
Irrelevant. They're gaining profits by doing so or they wouldn't be doing so. Profits which fund the development of every new drug, both failed and successful.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.