VIAGRA Pfizer began testing the compound for erectile dysfunction. In 1998, Viagra has been a household name ever since.
There are some real reasons that health care in America costs more than anywhere else. One difficult part of this is that we Americans have been subsidizing the entire world because our market model is unique. The American drug market is open to free competition with little in the way of price controls for drugs that often have no competitors. Both foreign owned and American companies invent and sell useful drugs in this free market. As a result, the American market IS almost the entire engine for new drug development in the world.
The model, however, is failing. The model depends on the stock market to determine the capital growth of the companies. In its turn, the stock market is interested in return on investment. After all, if profits falls, then the capital value of the company falls. The problem is that the biggest of American pharmas have outrun their ability to invent new drugs and patentsonly last a decade or so. So, to maintain their return on investment, large companies buy smaller companies. Each time they do that. of course, the size of the investment by the big company grows larger. There is an ever increasing need for returns. One biotech colleague claims that in the near future Pfizer will have to “invent” ALL the new drugs for the ent9ire world to make its return mach it capitalization.
Reuters reports that Pfizer Inc , he world’s largest drugmaker, is slashing its research budget in order to deliver on a 2012 profit forecast and allay Wall Street concerns the company has become too large.
Bernie Madoff would understand:
The greatest cause of Merck’s (NYSE: MRK) costumer loss is that the pharma company’s drug patents are expiring. In April 2010, the company’s treatments for high blood pressure and heart disease, Cozaar and Hyzaar, lost patent protection in the United States. The sales of the drugs decreased from $861 million in the quarter ending September 30, 2009, to $423 million for the same period in 2010. Now that the drugs are no longer patent protected, generic manufacturers are taking more Merck’s customers. Huff Post
While the potential for new drug development driven by the explosion of biology knowledge is immense, a successful restructuring of American medicine could halt drug development world wide.
American pharma subsidizes the entire world? WTF?
What hubris. Of the top 12 big pharma, US companies represent less than half of total revenues. There is a world outside the USA that develops and consumes pharmaceuticals.
A market open to “free” competition but with no competitors? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Other countries keep costs down through group purchasing power of pharmaceuticals, if not outright price controls. (And lets not forget paying for routine preventive health care and programs before costs get out of control)
One could just as well argue that the rest of the world subsidizes US pharma profits by signing on to WIPO patent regulations granting exclusivity in their countries, sometimes for so called “inventions” laying claim to whole classes drug targets and molecules or genes with yet to be discovered uses.
American pharma subsidizes the entire world? WTF?
What hubris. Of the top 12 big pharma, US companies represent less than half of total revenues. There is a world outside the USA that develops and consumes pharmaceuticals.
“American pharma” is NOT just pharma owned in America. All the major drug companies, whether founded in the US or owned in the US, have the major part of their research here. Tell me of a major drug in the last 20 years that was not developed in the US?
A market open to “free” competition but with no competitors? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
Who said there are no competitors?
“Other countries keep costs down through group purchasing power of pharmaceuticals, if not outright price controls. (And lets not forget paying for routine preventive health care and programs before costs get out of control)”
Exactly, this is why … from a drug co. perspective .. the US is important. They can make a large profit here.
A modern (global) firm builds its profits on a
world
market. . Since most of these companies are heavily leveraged, why would they want to invest in new drugs w/o the promise of the US market.
One could just as well argue that the rest of the world subsidizes US pharma profits by signing on to WIPO patent regulations granting exclusivity in their countries, sometimes for so called “inventions” laying claim to whole classes drug targets and molecules or genes with yet to be discovered uses.
Actually there are few “classes” that can get patents. For example, Merck developed the first statin, but their sales are now low vs. statins sold by other companies. D you have an example of an effective class patent? Perhpas you mean a patent on a molecule and its antagonists?
I fear that productive research and development of new drugs addressing medicine unmet needs has suffered tremendously under the short term visions of companies such as Pfizer, which has focused increasingly on short term profits. Truly fruitful research (which is difficult to start with) really takes a long-term, focused approach. I fear that companies such as Pfizer too often want to just “buy” it’s new ideas by buying up other companies and their drug pipelines, rather than take on the hard, risky work of not leaving a research area until some improvement in knowledge or approach has occurred. If scientists continually get jerked from project to project with the guiding principle of only testing whether or not a given drug is “a blockbuster now (not later in the future, Now”), then the paucity of new research developments which address unmet needs from this arena is to be expected. David Gordon (former pharmaceutical company scientist).