Capitalism? "Pharma chief defends 400% drug price rise as a ‘moral requirement’"

Capitalism should not be a guiding factor when it comes to healthcare or the development of life-saving drugs. But now even this is up for profit taking.

First, it's inhumane and immoral. Yet the following comments were uttered in defense of hiking drug prices for profit and saving jobs, at the expense of peoples pain and their lives:

“I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can.” 

and...

“We have to make money when we can.”

Second, while drug companies complain they need higher drug prices for research and development, they've actually cut back on introducing new drugs for an easier solution to make money; buy old generics and jack their prices sky high:

There’s a general feeling in drug development that manufacturers are entitled to recoup the cost of developing a drug, widely held to be about 10 to 15 years of employee time and about $1 billion. Manufacturers’ inability to earn those sums back has been one justification for companies leaving the market.

Setting aside the fact that taxpayers and the National Institute of Health developed many of our most important drugs, let's focus on big pharma's exploitation of human suffering for profit and shareholder happiness:

A HANDFUL OF years ago, a small pharmaceutical company quietly acquired the rights to an old 65-year-old generic antibiotic. New owner Nostrum Laboratories... abruptly raised the price more than 400 percent - $474.75 to $2,392. Nitrofurantoin ... is precious to the 6 to 8 million Americans who get urinary tract infections ... a liquid, used for children, elderly patients, and anyone who can’t swallow a pill.

Company CEO Nirman Mulye, telling the Financial Times, “We have to make money when we can. I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can. My exact words to the guy was, 'Listen I don't have a moral obligation to breathe and eat, but if I don't do those things I'll die. It's common sense that if a business doesn't make profit or at least break even it's not going to be able to stay in business, right? American jobs will be lost."

Old Drugs Make a High Priced Comeback: Why develop new cures when the old ones rake in profits? This is sick stuff:

There’s a particular reason why Nostrum’s price hike has sparked such a reaction. Like Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company is proposing to profit off a drug it didn’t invent. 

Mr Mulye: “I agree with Martin Shkreli that when he raised the price of his drug he was within his rights because he had to reward his shareholders. If he’s the only one selling it then he can make as much money as he can. This is a capitalist economy and if you can’t make money you can’t stay in business. We have to make money when we can. The price of iPhones goes up, the price of cars goes up, hotel rooms are very expensive.”

Another absurd rationalization...

Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and vice-provost at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that case somewhat flippantly in The New York Times in 2015. “As a society we seem willing to pay $100,000 or more for cancer drugs that cure no one and at best add weeks or a few months to life. We are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for knee surgery that, at best, improves function but is not lifesaving,” he wrote. “So why won’t we pay $10,000 for a lifesaving antibiotic?”

The answers to that question have been: No, we shouldn’t raise antibiotic prices, because other drugs are overpriced already, or No, because poor countries who already struggle to buy enough antibiotics won’t be able to afford them at all.

Even a Trump administration official gagged on this one:

That didn’t sit well with FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb—who tweeted, “There’s no moral imperative to price gouge and take advantage of patients”—or with senators Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who sent a letter to Nostrum calling the increase “shocking.”

Health Care News Update: GOP targets Opioid solution - Medicaid. Boomer Pot Heads! Big Pharm Profiting off Poor!!!

Note: Since I get health care email updates, I'm not able to provide some of the connecting links to the following stories.

GOP hates Medicaid, can't Solve Opioid Epidemic: The overriding problem with their purely ideologically driven one-size-fits-all policies is that they end up getting in the way of solving other problems. The opioid epidemic consuming rural Republican districts hit an unexpected wall; Medicaid. Destroying it will only put more people on Medicaid, and they won't let that happen.

This tweet highlighting AG Brad Schimel utter partisan misuse of his office proves how empty the GOP's war on opioid addiction is. In fact, I think the GOP war on opioids is a misdirection play, a way to ignore real health care reform:

Since Republicans are hell-bent on destroying Medicaid, they own this problem:

As The Health 202 wrote in March, the most efficient way to tackle opioid abuse is probably through the Medicaid program, since it covers four in 10 non-elderly adults with opioid addiction.

It's another GOP created problem that will consume time, energy, and lots of money because the obvious solution has been targeted for destruction. And their slow acceptance of marijuana will put off lower opioid use seen in states that have legalized pot. 

________________________________________________________________________________

60's Freaks are the Marijuana Baby Boom Users: Interesting but obvious conclusion:

New research shows the surge in marijuana use is driven not by young people but by the gray-haired and balding set, The Post's Keith Humphreys reports. Only two age groups showed a significant rise in use ... Compared with older Americans 30 years ago, Americans age 50 to 59 and 60 and older today are a remarkable 20 times more likely to use marijuana.

_________________________________________________________________________________

A ghoulish Profit-from-the-Poor Driven Drug Industry: The crucial thing to keep in mind below is how Medicaid discounts on drug prices could push health care prices down for patients with rare life-threatening diseases: 

"...reimbursements to drug firms are typically less generous than with private insurance because Medi-Cal is entitled by law to deep discounts."

Big Pharma knows how to game the system, keeping drug prices high at the expense of the public:

Olive-McCoy, 44, has hereditary angioedema (HAE), a life-threatening disease so rare that many doctors have only read about it. Fortunately, there are cutting-edge drugs to keep the swelling at bay and treat the attacks that breakthrough. Olive-McCoy couldn’t afford or qualify for health insurance. But once she was put on a newly approved rare-disease drug, she entered a pocket of the health-care system that drug companies use to ensure that rare-disease patients can afford their expensive medicine.

Pharmaceutical companies donate to independent charities that cover drug co-pays and, in some cases, health insurance premiums. Olive-McCoy could turn to Medi-Cal, her state’s health plan for the poor. But health experts said that Medi-Cal would not automatically cover her specialists and that, crucially, reimbursements to drug firms are typically less generous than with private insurance because Medi-Cal is entitled by law to deep discounts...shield drug companies from the pressure to lower their prices.

Funding charities that ensure patients get their drugs can quickly pay off. A Citi Research report found that a pharmaceutical company’s $1 million donation to a charity for patients with rare diseases can generate up to a $21 million return in drug reimbursements.

“People who are eligible for public programs (eg. Medicare and Medicaid), which may offer additional benefits and services, should not be inappropriately steered into the commercial insurance market to generate greater reimbursement,” Kristine Grow, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, wrote in an email. The system of third-party payments, she added, “skews the risk pool and imposes higher costs for all consumers.”

Real Health: Big Pharma's Free Speech Rights; GOP opposes saving money on Medicare; Doctors Burning out on Insurance Paperwork-increasing Medical Errors!!!

Freeloading Republicans loves getting a taxpayer check, they just don't like to do anything to earn it. Health care privatization is their way to shift responsibility, so they can shrug their shoulders and say "don't blame us, that's the free market."

Starting with this report, I'll be featuring stories from Modern Healthcare, a great source of news that digs much deeper into the real and more complicated problems of health care than the simple repeal ObamaCare or not distraction. This a subscription service, so some of the links will be inaccessible.

 Republicans Oppose Saving Money on Medicare:

 Multiplesources confirmed that Republicans upset with what they say is overreach by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, also known as CMMI … (and) could lead to (Republican) legislation intended to hinder the agency and slow its attempts to further the goal of paying providers for value rather than volume.

Here’s the key point given by Republicans that could easily be applied to their own free market gamble, a bad idea that not one industrialized country is using, and for good reason – it doesn’t work:

More than 170 House Republicans sent a letter to Adminstrator Andy Slavitt in September asking that the CMMI stop requiring mandatory participation in any payment models; “Medicare providers and their patients are blindly being forced into high-risk government-dictated reforms with unknown impacts. Any true medical experiment requires patients' consent. However, patients residing in an affected geographical area will have no choice about their participation.”

1^st Amendment gives Big Pharma “Free Speech” rights to Stuff Corporate Pockets? 

The Food and Drug Administration is considering dramatic changes to its drug marketing rules that threaten to make the problem of already out-of-control drug spending even worse … responding to the drug industry's demands for greater freedom to “promote” the off-label use of prescription drugs and to the courts' drift toward giving corporations unlimited freedom-of-speech rights.

“Off-label” refers to uses that have never received approval or scrutiny from the FDA's regulatory scientists (Doctors are allowed to prescribe off-label). The FDA is undertaking its “comprehensive review” now because of a string of recent court decisions saying the First Amendment gives industry sales representatives free rein to promote unproven uses to physicians. The agency may be betting that by weakening its current rules, it will forestall review by a U.S. Supreme Court that is moving rapidly to giving corporations the rights of individuals. But that's the wrong calculus for an agency that's supposed to ensure every drug is safe and efficacious. 

Private Health Care System is Burning Doctors Out of Business, Increasing Medical Errors:

Burnout, defined as physical and emotional exhaustion as a result of prolonged stress, has become shockingly prevalent among U.S. physicians. Doctors experiencing professional burnout not only put their own well-being at risk, but also that of their patients … studies have found that distressed healthcare providers make more mistakes on the job. Surgeons who feel burned out have a higher likelihood of reporting major medical errors, which are estimated to be the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. ahead of stroke and diabetes. Half of surveyed physicians believe that overwork, stress and fatigue among health professionals significantly contribute to medical errors.

In recent years, changes have caused the problem of burnout to worsen. Demographers project the Medicare-eligible population will more than double by 2060. Older people require more care.

A study published in July by the Mayo Clinic Proceedings explored the relationship between clerical tasks, the electronic practice environment and burnout. Doctors who used Electronic Health Records and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) had lower levels of satisfaction because of the amount of time spent on clerical tasks and reported higher rates of burnout. “There are several broad categories of contributors to physician burnout, including greater work hours and effort, poor work efficiency and support, and loss of meaning in work,” said Dr. Colin P. West at the Mayo Clinic, who co-authored the study. “Although the promise of the electronic medical record has been to allow more efficient, higher-quality care, often clerical tasks and electronic medical records negatively affect all of these contributors … leaving less opportunity to interact with patients. In short, we need the technology to support its users rather than the current norm of the users serving the technology.” The extra time required for these routine tasks often crosses the borders of the office into the physician's home, disrupting work-life balance and personal relationships. 

Not just Insurers: Drug Price Hikes will kill you and U.S. health care system too.

While we're watching the insurance base health care system crumble, the countries pharmaceutical industry might just strike the final blow, pricing almost everyone out.

Insurance Ripoff: The Democrats and Obama administration still aren't making the above argument against insurance and big pharma. The fact that insurers can't make high enough profits and meet investor expectations on the exchanges isn't ObamaCare's fault, it's the private insurance industry model. Reminder; insurers aren't doctors or hospitals; and they don't provide consumers with extra freedoms when they're locked into their own provider networks.

Drug Company Ripoff: Here's the jaw dropping latest from an industry that mimics some of the ravaging diseases it treats.

A new study just found that:

Derma-Smoothe oil is a topical treatment for eczema that cost $46 in 2009. This year, its $323. Retin-A Micro, an acne skin treatment, cost $178 in 2009. This year, it’s $915.

Cara cream, which is used to treat wartlike, precancerous growths as well superficial, basal-cell skin cancer … jumped from $159 in 2009 to $2,865 this year.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian-based company that is known for buying the rights to drugs and raising their prices, (is raising its) acne drug, Retin-A Micro 413% … Targretin gel, used to treat a type of cancer in the skin known as cutaneous T-cell lymphoma was the most expensive drug on the list, rising in price from $1,687 in 2009 to $30,320 this year.

"This is really a phenomenon that is pervasive throughout the entire pharmaceutical industry," said lead author Miranda Rosenberg. "It has the potential to bankrupt our system."

The study comes at the same time this just broke:

Martin Shkreli, the face of pharmaceutical greed!!!

Turing Pharmaceuticals AG will not will not change its decision to raise the price of a decades-old drug, Daraprim, by more than 5,000 percent, backing out of previous statements that it would cut the cost by the end of the year … which jumped from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill earlier this year. 

Getting back to the new study.... 

The research comes amid growing concern and government inquiries about dramatic increases in prescription drug prices in general. Michael Carome, a physician and director of the Health Research Group of the watchdog organization, Public Citizen said the price increases are not due to inflation or higher priced ingredients. "It's because companies can jack up their prices and patients are held hostage," he said. Public Citizen issued a report on what it said were needlessly high Medicare Part D brand name drug prices. It blamed the prices on congressional restrictions on the government's ability to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry.

Remember, government cannot use its citizen backed bulk buying power to lower prices, like other countries do. It's the purist form of ideological conservatism, and really bad economics.  

(According to the study), many of the drugs on the list with the biggest price increases have been on the market for 10 years or more.
■ Prescription drugs just cost more in the U.S. than in other countries where they can be purchased for a fraction of the price.
■ Drug-makers can get extensions on their patents, allowing them to keep out generic competitors.
■ Medicare cannot legally negotiate lower drug prices, unlike governments in other countries.
■ Mergers in the pharmaceutical industry have allowed some companies to corner the market on products.

Santorum was right; Kids, Patients Lose Life Saving Drugs due to declining profits. Big Pharma Death Panel at work.

You've heard the arguments that support the current drug industry price ripoffs in this country; research and development would dry up without high prices. But what happens when those high priced drugs turn generic, and are no longer a cash cow for Big Pharma? They abandon the drugs and the patients that need them.

This is the best health care system in the world? Not even close. CBS:



Here's Rick Santorum spelling out how profits determine whether a drug is available. Guess what, now we know what the real problem is. Profits vs humans.