Quite possible the largest alternative health scam ever.

[HoreTore]

386 euros for a small wooden block.

It's a good thing we have decent and honest people to treat us instead of the evil BigPharma who just want your money.

I've wasted a fortune by burning wood chippings over the years.

[Husar]

386 euros for a small wooden block.

It's a good thing we have decent and honest people to treat us instead of the evil BigPharma who just want your money.

I've wasted a fortune by burning wood chippings over the years.

I got your snide remark, which is not to say that it was aimed at me.

Can you explain how "BigPharma" can take known medications off the market, release the exact same ones again under a different name, supposedly to treat a different illness (because that it works agains the other illness was only discovered recently) and use these "added benefits" to justify a price increase from 30€ to somewhere around 800 IIRC? If they do that sort of thing out of the goodness of their hearts, then I'll take the wood for 400 bucks, thankyouverymuch.

I don't think that BigPharma is out to kill us all, but if they make trillions or thereabouts with expensive chemotherapy and someone invents a pill that solves cancer for 5 bucks per patient and has hardly any side effects, I wouldn't trust BigPharma to promote it.

Let's not forget that one side being wrong does not automatically make the other side right.

Also, here's a link with selectively chosen quotes: http://www.technologyreview.com/feat...-of-two-drugs/

$841 for two pills a day

And so in determining the price for a drug, companies ask themselves questions that have next to nothing to do with the drugs’ costs. “It is not a science,” the veteran drug maker and former Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer told me. “It is a feel.”

They really don't want anyone's money, just as much as they can get away with from people who cannot survive not paying it.

[HoreTore]

That's why we nationalize, Husar

[Sir Moody]

As someone with connections to "Big Pharma" (my father works for Merck pharmaceuticals) what you aren't getting Husar is drugs aren't sold at their cost price - some drugs are made artificially cheaper by Governments (even to a point where they make a loss on producing the drugs) - this is done on a "illness by illness" basis, this means the same drug may be cheaper to cure one thing not because the drug is actually cheap but because the Governments regulate the price.

A good example of this is antibiotics - the price of antibiotics is highly regulated which means producing new antibiotics (which is a VERY expensive process) isn't cost effective at all - and hence we have new strains of antibiotic resistant infections with no new drugs to treat them with...

Of course it could just be plain greed (no industry is immune to that)...

[Sigurd]

Yeah... BigP factors in research cost into the final price of the pill. If there is a great demand, this medicine should be cheaper pr pill. I said should but that is not always the case.
Medicine are patented for a specific time, but in many cases when this time is up the medicine is discontinued whereas it could greatly benefit e.g. Africa.

My wife works at a hospital pharmacy and at the department making medicine for cancer patients.
Some of the medicine is so specific or has such a narrow "target group" that it costs over 100 000 NoK (~ €12 000) for a single dose. Imagine the stress of the lab technician who handles the jar of powder worth millions and if made wrong when diluting a dose, it needs to be thrown out.

[Husar]

That's why we nationalize, Husar

I actually had that part in my post but thought it might be too distracting for some.

As someone with connections to "Big Pharma" (my father works for Merck pharmaceuticals) what you aren't getting Husar is drugs aren't sold at their cost price - some drugs are made artificially cheaper by Governments (even to a point where they make a loss on producing the drugs) - this is done on a "illness by illness" basis, this means the same drug may be cheaper to cure one thing not because the drug is actually cheap but because the Governments regulate the price.

A good example of this is antibiotics - the price of antibiotics is highly regulated which means producing new antibiotics (which is a VERY expensive process) isn't cost effective at all - and hence we have new strains of antibiotic resistant infections with no new drugs to treat them with...

Of course it could just be plain greed (no industry is immune to that)...

I quoted a guy saying that drugs are not sold at theit cost price and you tell me that I don't get that drugs are not sold at their cost price?

Does that mean a drug that should cost 800€ is sold for 30€ to a smaller number of people for years and noone had a problem with the company making a 730€ loss with each sale? Possibly even a bigger loss since 800€ is the price they apparently calculated for selling it on an even larger market due to the newly found benefits for other patients. IMO if that were the case, they could have just pulled the original drug even earlier since noone stopped them from doing that.

There is some government regulation going on, but most of it regards the medication that insurers have to pay for if there are several similarly effective products on the market.

And yes, research cost is factored into every product, but the question remains whether betting/investing money on people getting desperately sick and being forced to buy an ailment is actually such a great idea and cannot be abused to increase the ROI. Insurances only serve as a partial counter to that problem since there are usually points where they can refuse to pay.

The only solution is to nationalize the entire health industry, get rid of all the administrative overhead that insurances produce and deliver the medications directly to the people via tax funding that replaces the current insurance fees.

[Sir Moody]

I actually had that part in my post but thought it might be too distracting for some.
Does that mean a drug that should cost 800€ is sold for 30€ to a smaller number of people for years and noone had a problem with the company making a 730€ loss with each sale? Possibly even a bigger loss since 800€ is the price they apparently calculated for selling it on an even larger market due to the newly found benefits for other patients. IMO if that were the case, they could have just pulled the original drug even earlier since noone stopped them from doing that.

As I said before the prices are regulated by government - however Governments have a hard time persuading the companies to make a loss on some products so instead they make a "deal" - the deal is basically they have to charge X for drugs treating illness Y however they are allowed to gouge on treatments for illness A - if it is later discovered X can also treat A then the price will go up to cover the costs of other regulated products (the whole rebranding thing is the way they are allowed to do this)

So yes the companies have a problem with making a loss on a particular sale but they cover it by gouging on another type entirely to cover the costs.

Having now read the article you linked (sorry didnt see the link first time through ) it seems the US system is even more complicated by insurance companies getting to pick which drugs they cover... just another good reason to keep insurance companies out of health care imo...

[HoreTore]

the question remains whether betting/investing money on people getting desperately sick and being forced to buy an ailment is actually such a great idea and cannot be abused to increase the ROI.

False fear.

People are already getting desperately sick, there is no need for the drug companies to make people ill to increase profits. And speaking of profits; BigPharma profits are not larger than any other profit in the same location. It's big in absolute numbers, but that's because the industry is large, not because the profit percentage is big.

Alternative health practitioners, on the other hand, do create "diseases" which they can then sell people expensive wooden blocks to "cure". Having "a low aether", for example, is a perfect example of a condition designed specifically to take money from people.

[HoreTore]

Having now read the article you linked (sorry didnt see the link first time through ) it seems the US system is even more complicated by insurance companies getting to pick which drugs they cover... just another good reason to keep insurance companies out of health care imo...

Fortunately, since this thread is dominated by Europeans, so I see no reason why we should deal with the utterly broken US system...

[Husar]

False fear.

People are already getting desperately sick, there is no need for the drug companies to make people ill to increase profits. And speaking of profits; BigPharma profits are not larger than any other profit in the same location. It's big in absolute numbers, but that's because the industry is large, not because the profit percentage is big.

I never said they intentionally make people ill, I said in a few cases they might have an interest to keep people ill instead of finding an ailment. And I said that investors want to get as much ROI as possible and that may be an incentive to inflate prices when people can hardly afford not to buy a drug. It's certainly an incentive not to produce drugs that can only be sold on markets with a majority of relatively poor people.

I don't quite see the need to talk about alternative health scams, that's basic life knowledge.
The real question is why, how and to what extent may the others scam us as well?

The official profit percentages can also be easily manipulated by paying higher wages or making bigger "investments" etc.
Such as lobbying "investments": http://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturer/

From 1998 to 2013, Big Pharma spent nearly $2.7 billion on lobbying expenses — more than any other industry and 42 percent more than the second highest paying industry: insurance. And since 1990, individuals, lobbyists and political action committees affiliated with the industry have doled out $150 million in campaign contributions.

The argument that their profit percentage share is average but their market is huge may sound grerat at first, but my argument was that they may keep the market that huge on purpose. Especially in the US it seems like doctors are incentivized to sell people more medication and here in Germany some people see it as a problem when doctors actively advertise expensive solutions from big pharma that are not covered by insurance. And doctors are incentivized to do so by the pharma companies.

So yes, people do get sick by themselves, but in many cases the doctors get a lot of leverage in defining what is sick and what is quite alright. In that sense BigPharma often operates in a similar way that you accuse alternatives of doing, except BigPharma indirectly sells it as official established stuff by incentivizing real doctors to sell it for them.

There is also a huge problem with illegal and fake drugs being sold, that's also a huge scam worth mentioning.

[HoreTore]

I said in a few cases they might have an interest to keep people ill instead of finding an ailment.

Except they don't, since people are sick all the time. And poor people don't matter, as people get "sicker" the richer they get.

It's not BigPharma pushing drugs, it's the general public who pushes for more, more and even more. There's no need for the pharmaceutical companies to get all evil and scheming, we're the perfect customers already. Ever heard of any politician advocating a lower standard of healthcare? Didn't think so. It's political suicide to even suggest slowing down healthcare.

I don't quite see the need to talk about alternative health scams

Mostly because they're hilarious. But you're German, so....

[Husar]

Except they don't, since people are sick all the time. And poor people don't matter, as people get "sicker" the richer they get.

It's not BigPharma pushing drugs, it's the general public who pushes for more, more and even more. There's no need for the pharmaceutical companies to get all evil and scheming, we're the perfect customers already. Ever heard of any politician advocating a lower standard of healthcare? Didn't think so. It's political suicide to even suggest slowing down healthcare.

Yes, but then you could also say that society demands for alternative healthcare and religion. IIRC there are studies which suggest that religious people live longer and happier lives on average.

[HoreTore]

Yes, but then you could also say that society demands for alternative healthcare and religion. IIRC there are studies which suggest that religious people live longer and happier lives on average.

Placebo reigns supreme.

Society most certainly demands alternative healthcare(and religion), just like society demands increased healthcare in general.

That's why I oppose both. Sack half the doctors and all homeopaths.

[Husar]

Placebo reigns supreme.

Placebo also means that it works, so why do you oppose things that work?

[Kralizec]

Practioners of alternative medicine are the worst.
Big Pharma might be overpaid but at least their products have genuine (and usually positive) effects.

Fact: alternative medicine took away one of my friends, a guy that I shared a roof with in college. He kept using homeopathic piss whenever he was ill. I couldn't talk him out of it so I had to put him down.

[Montmorency]

so I had to put him down.

Did you whisper, "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you"?

[Strike For The South]

“You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine.”
― Tim Minchin

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Next you will be telling me that Semmelweis was correct....

[rory_20_uk]

Companies make things to make a profit? Say it ain't true!!!!

Ever bought a graphics card or a CPU? They sell the same thing at different price points, often by crippling functions on the cheaper models! And they try hard to stop people turning on the features - back in the day one could use a graphite pencil to alter it - no more!

Cars have engines which have been "tuned" differently for different price points - paying hundreds more for a small code!

Any more examples of companies doing despicable things to make money?

The rules on registering a new chemical entity or biological get stricter - often by the year. And guess what? This costs a load of money. Which is increasingly difficult to get back, because governments have made making copies a lot easier with special new legislation on both biosimilars and generics!

Doctors also are very happy to use off lisence - although technically illegal and unethical as it is untested. But if there's money to be saved, why worry? Sure, the drug with an indication spent tens of millions to get that - but the price is higher for reasons we don't care about so we'll use the cheap stuff.

And can you believe it? There is less R&D done in the West than there used to be! Just because the cost of development has increased, interactions with clinicians is stricter by the year and there are pressures on pricing they go and do their work elsewhere...

[a completely inoffensive name]

And can you believe it? There is less R&D done in the West than there used to be! Just because the cost of development has increased, interactions with clinicians is stricter by the year and there are pressures on pricing they go and do their work elsewhere...

What is the solution? How do you reconcile the public's need for cheap drugs with the fact that making new drugs (regulations or not) is very expensive. Seems to be an unavoidable clash.

[Husar]

Ever bought a graphics card or a CPU? They sell the same thing at different price points, often by crippling functions on the cheaper models! And they try hard to stop people turning on the features - back in the day one could use a graphite pencil to alter it - no more!

So drugs can be held to the same ethical standards as entertainment devices?

[rory_20_uk]

So drugs can be held to the same ethical standards as entertainment devices?

Yes - or provide massive subsidies to companies that work on drugs to compensate them for the increased standards. Or governments should start manufacturing these drugs that need to be made from an "ethical" standpoint.

What other things should have the same high ethical standpoint?

Water purifiers?
Tents
Solar power - hell why not all renewable technology?
Communication, that's key to a modern society. Invalidate all patents on comunications, fibre optics etc to help others.
Medical training for doctors and other clinical staff? Better set up bursaries for poorer countries - that's ethical.

So, in fact medicines are only one of many things required. Either all are special or none are.

[HoreTore]

All are special - nationalize the lot of them.


And ban the snake oil salesmen.

[rory_20_uk]

All are special - nationalize the lot of them.

How many new chemical entities for human theraputic use have been developed by governments - anywhere?

One of the few governments that could even attempt this would be Norway (due to costs)... yet they've not done so.

If it is so easy to make these things and companies are oh so greedy with what they make and what they charge I'm surprised that there hasn't been more competition.

[Husar]

Yes - or provide massive subsidies to companies that work on drugs to compensate them for the increased standards. Or governments should start manufacturing these drugs that need to be made from an "ethical" standpoint.

Now you sound like a lobbyist, but nationalizing them all will solve the subsidy problem.

What other things should have the same high ethical standpoint?

Food and housing, especially housing prices are monitored and sometimes capped by the government here anyway.

So, in fact medicines are only one of many things required. Either all are special or none are.

How long can someone who has a flu survive without electronic communication devices?
How long can the same person survive without water?

We are certainly dependent on electric energy nowadays, so you may want to add that to the list, but you also forgot that not all of the things you mention have a stable demand and have an inelastic demand as one of my links also explained.

If you cannot afford a chemo therapy that's not the same as not being able to afford a new smartphone.
You may lose your job if you cannot afford to get your knee fixed and tumble into poverty, but that is unlikely to happen if you cannot afford to buy Rome 2.
Unhealthy people are also a macroeconomic concern because they cost society money unless you're going to say we might also kill the ones who cannot afford to have their bodies fixed and have become useless to society.

[rory_20_uk]

Now you sound like a lobbyist, but nationalizing them all will solve the subsidy problem.



Food and housing, especially housing prices are monitored and sometimes capped by the government here anyway.



How long can someone who has a flu survive without electronic communication devices?
How long can the same person survive without water?

We are certainly dependent on electric energy nowadays, so you may want to add that to the list, but you also forgot that not all of the things you mention have a stable demand and have an inelastic demand as one of my links also explained.

If you cannot afford a chemo therapy that's not the same as not being able to afford a new smartphone.
You may lose your job if you cannot afford to get your knee fixed and tumble into poverty, but that is unlikely to happen if you cannot afford to buy Rome 2.
Unhealthy people are also a macroeconomic concern because they cost society money unless you're going to say we might also kill the ones who cannot afford to have their bodies fixed and have become useless to society.

Nationalising companies is either extremely expensive or causes levels of capital flight that no Western country could countenance.

There are many types of food and housing. Does the system ensure that the best food and housing is as cheap as the worst? Given that these variables are also linked to health they should be to ensure equality.

Chemo is probably more neccecary for society than smartphones. So... it comes to that level before there are things that can be chosen which are not essential?
People with damaged knees can do many - if not most - jobs. Surgery might help some of them continue the jobs they were doing.

Unhealthy people are a macroeconomic cost. And the "logic" that making people healthier was part of the dream when the NHS started that after the initial high costs, things would get cheaper as people became more healthy. Clearly that didn't happen - and is one of the reasons why most countries run massive current account debts as costs for retired people are balooning as the longer they live the more they cost - and we can pay more for them to live longer.

Focusing resources on getting people back to work as quickly as possible then looking after everyone else would make economic sense - as the economy would be a lot bigger, meaning there is more money to spend on the health service - but of course is electoral suicide. Best we all pretend that year on year increases to health expenditure are sustainable... When a Government runs a Ponzi scheme it is OK for some reason.

[Husar]

Nationalising companies is either extremely expensive or causes levels of capital flight that no Western country could countenance.

There are many types of food and housing. Does the system ensure that the best food and housing is as cheap as the worst? Given that these variables are also linked to health they should be to ensure equality.

Chemo is probably more neccecary for society than smartphones. So... it comes to that level before there are things that can be chosen which are not essential?
People with damaged knees can do many - if not most - jobs. Surgery might help some of them continue the jobs they were doing.

Unhealthy people are a macroeconomic cost. And the "logic" that making people healthier was part of the dream when the NHS started that after the initial high costs, things would get cheaper as people became more healthy. Clearly that didn't happen - and is one of the reasons why most countries run massive current account debts as costs for retired people are balooning as the longer they live the more they cost - and we can pay more for them to live longer.

Focusing resources on getting people back to work as quickly as possible then looking after everyone else would make economic sense - as the economy would be a lot bigger, meaning there is more money to spend on the health service - but of course is electoral suicide. Best we all pretend that year on year increases to health expenditure are sustainable... When a Government runs a Ponzi scheme it is OK for some reason.

So basically death panels, because money > people?

[rory_20_uk]

So basically death panels, because money > people?

No, free treatment for everyone for everything!!!!

Resources are finite. Health needs can be almost infinite - you can always have more safety checks, longer trials, more treatment for more conditions.

Some would prefer to try really hard to pretend that there are no restrictions rather than face that healthcare is, was and probably always will be rationed: there are not enough organs for the doners that require them - so people are on a list; expensive drugs are not given to everyone, but only those who will see the best benefit.

Germany is a great example which is so keen in pushing down prices they even demand some that are so low to be unprofitable... then whinge when companies don't sell them. However, there appears to be no system in making all BMWs cost the same as Skodas as they are all cars after all.

[HoreTore]

How many new chemical entities for human theraputic use have been developed by governments - anywhere?

Penicillin?

But no, Universities tend not to make products ready for sale - they just do all the research needed.

I can't really see why Oxford, Cambridge or whatever should be unable to produce a medicine.

[rory_20_uk]

Penicillin?

But no, Universities tend not to make products ready for sale - they just do all the research needed.

I can't really see why Oxford, Cambridge or whatever should be unable to produce a medicine.

We rarely, if ever use penicillin as is created by the mould, as the spectrum of activity is very low and it has to be given intravenously. I think "developed" is a rather flattering term for "accidentally found after poor sterile technique on a petri dish".

Universities do set up spin off biotechs which again tend to do the pre-clinical work by themselves and then team up with a large(r) company to do Phase I-III trials / license and market the product.

Universities don't have the hundreds of millions / billions to spare to get one registered - odds of a molecule getting between phase I and the market are something like 1 in 100. Big (bad, eeeeeevil) companies get money on the ones they sell to invest in R&D which more often than not goes nowhere.

Then even when registered, most healthcare professionals demand vastly more trial data than purely to register a product - and guess what? That costs further millions now which might be paid back later.