Showing posts with label Pharmaceutical Industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pharmaceutical Industry. Show all posts
7/30/22
9/29/21
The Pharmaceutical Industry Exposed:The Dark Side of Pharma Globalization - Part 1 and 2 - by Veronika Valdova
ABSTRACT: The combination of limited capacity to exercise control over essential commodities, the long-term trend of outsourcing, with the politicization of business relationships causes the entire pharmaceutical industrial sector to be internationally dependent, creating numerous potentials for systemic failure.
R%ead more at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-dependency-foreign-pharmaceutical-production-imposes-valdova
R%ead more at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-dependency-foreign-pharmaceutical-production-imposes-valdova
1/30/20
Big Pharma: Players in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Big Pharma)
The term “Big Pharma” is used quite often to describe massive
pharmaceutical companies that make literally billions of dollars every
year to keep Americans regularly supplied with a medicine cabinet’s
worth of pills. But when we say Big Pharma, who are the players in the
pharmaceutical industry? Who is responsible for flooding neighborhoods
and communities with addictive medication? Who are the agencies
responsible for keeping them in check?
There are two sides to the coin of this conversation: the pharmaceutical industry, which is responsible for the development, manufacturing, and marketing of drugs for use as medications; and Big Pharma, the colloquial (and often pejorative) term used to describe faceless corporations that push hugely overpriced drugs onto hapless and desperate consumers.
Some of the names of the biggest players in the industry may be familiar. Others may not ring as many bells, but with their market value, the relative anonymity works to their advantage. The Motley Fool provides a list of the companies doing the best business:
Read more at: Players in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Big Pharma)
There are two sides to the coin of this conversation: the pharmaceutical industry, which is responsible for the development, manufacturing, and marketing of drugs for use as medications; and Big Pharma, the colloquial (and often pejorative) term used to describe faceless corporations that push hugely overpriced drugs onto hapless and desperate consumers.
Some of the names of the biggest players in the industry may be familiar. Others may not ring as many bells, but with their market value, the relative anonymity works to their advantage. The Motley Fool provides a list of the companies doing the best business:
Read more at: Players in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Big Pharma)
9/14/19
Big Pharma: playing dangerous games with human health
Big Pharma nixes new drugs despite impending 'antibiotic apocalypse'
Read more at:
https://p.dw.com/p/3Pbin
https://p.dw.com/p/3Pbin
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1/29/19
Capitalism: slowly but surely the Capitalist system is self-destructing
Capitalism: all we have to do is look how some major multinational corporations, including the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries, weapons or financial Industry, are exploiting the world community, to realize they are the ones who are destroying the image and reputation of Capitalism
http://www.asanet.org/news-events/speak-sociology/real-structural-problem-self-destruction-capitalism
http://www.asanet.org/news-events/speak-sociology/real-structural-problem-self-destruction-capitalism
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: Robbing everyone blind and nothing or no one seems able to stop them
It is a scandal that the pharmaceutical industry is able to get away with these high prices and allowed to constantly increase their prices, without any Government intervention or legislation
5/2/16
Chemical/Pharmaceutical Industry - Britain: Reckitt Benckiser sold deadly sterilisers in South Korea
British-based firm Reckitt Benckiser
has admitted for the first time selling a humidifier disinfectant that
killed about 100 people in South Korea.
Reckitt Benckiser is among several firms whose products are blamed for the deaths.
It has offered compensation to the families of those who died, as well as the hundreds more who were injured.
Reckitt Benckiser withdrew its product from the market after South Korean authorities suggested a link between chemicals to sterilise humidifiers and lung conditions in 2011.
"This is the first time we are accepting the fullest responsibility, and we are offering a complete and full apology. We were late, five years have passed," Ataur Safdar said.
He added that the company was setting up a multi-million dollar humanitarian fund for the victims and their families.
Many are said to be children or pregnant women.
The company, which also makes painkiller Nurofen, was fined last week in Australia for misleading customers.
A court ruled that products marketed as targeting specific pains, such as migraine, were actually identical.
Background on Reckitt Benckiser
- Their tagline: "Healthier lives, happier homes"
- Pre-tax profit (2015): $3.2bn
- Key products: Dettol, Nurofen, Durex, Cillit Bang, Vanish, Clearasil
- Founded: 1819-1823 in UK by millers Isaac and Thomas Reckitt, and Johann A Benckiser, industrial chemicals business owner
- Presence: 60 countries, with 37,000 employees
3/1/16
USA: Pharmaceutical Industry Ripoff of the Public Unacceptable:But Stephen J. Ubl Doesn't Buy iI
 |
| Big Pgharma is ripping us off |
Mr.n Ubl, the 47-year-old president and chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, took charge in November, as the Obama administration, presidential candidates, members of Congress, consumer groups, health insurance companies and doctors were criticizing the prescription drug industry for charging prices they saw as exorbitant and excessive.
The anger has only grown worse.
“Enough is enough,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the firebrand Democratic presidential candidate, wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies can no longer be allowed to rip off American patients.”
That anger is just one of the challenges facing Mr. Ubl.
The pharmaceutical and health products industry spent more on federal lobbying than any other industry in 2015, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that tracks money in politics.
Within that sector, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America led the list, with $18.4 million in spending on a wide range of health, trade and patent issues. Mr. Ubl’s lobbying powerhouse has members that include giants like Amgen, Eli Lilly, Johnson & ohnson, Merck and Pfizer.
Thegroup reported total expenses of nearly $208 million in 2014, the most recent available filing with the Internal Revenue Service. Its 170 employees work at its headquarters here, as well as in nine offices in the United States and others in Tokyo and Dubai.
Some of that money is used to cultivate strategic relationships through grants to doctor organizations and nonprofit advocacy groups representing patients with specific diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and arthritis. And the organization multiplies its influence through more than 30 lobbying consultingc ommunications and law firms.
But public outrage over drug prices is boiling. John C. Rother, who leads the Campaign for Sustainable RPricing, backed by consumer, labor and physician groups, said Mr. Ubl was in an impossible position.
“The issue is prices,” Mr. Rother said, and the lobby for drug makers, like\ other trade associations, “can’t do much on prices without getting into trouble under the antitrust laws.” Any efforts to control or suggest
prices raise antitrust concerns, federal officials say.
prices raise antitrust concerns, federal officials say.
Mr. Ubl (pronounced YOU-bul) said the drug lobby had been effective at beating back proposals like allowing the government to negotiate drug prices or import medicines from Canada. But, he said, it has not been as good at formulating and advancing a positive agenda. He hopes to change that. Brand-name drug companies and manufacturers of lower-cost generic drugs have historically been rivals. But Mr. Ubl said he wanted the government to speed the approval of generic drugs and approve more of them, reducing a backlog of generic drug applications. Increased competition, he said, would help hold down prices — and could perhaps avoid another outcry like the one over Daraprim, a drug to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection.
Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up founded by a former hedge fund manager, Martin Shkreli, acquired Daraprim last year and immediately increased the price to $750 a tablet, from $13.50.
Note EU-Digest: Many
Americans who have family members or friends living abroad and need
prescription drugs are often having them buy the exact similar
prescription drugs as those being sold inAmerica, abroad, at often
less than 10% of the US listed price.
In
one particular case, a person who required eye drops to keep his
Glaucoma pressure under control had a family friend buy the eye drops,
which in America would have cost him $200.00 (same brand name and
quality) for approximately $10.00 in Europe . This is not only
scandalous, but also complete highway robbery.
Read more: Pharmaceutical Industry Ripoff: Top Lobbyist for Drug Makers Threads a Thicket of Outrage -The New York Times
4/25/15
Mercury in Vaccines: Anti-vax group defends comparing immunisation withThimerosam additive to rape
In a press release issued recently, one
that almost no mainstreain Australia m media sources have bothered to report, it was
announced that Dr. Brian Hooker had finally received documents from the
CDC through a Freedom of Information Act that revealed the CDC had
access to data linking Thimerosal in vaccines to autism, non-organic
sleep disorders, and speech disorders.
Two members of Congress helped Dr. Hooker
draft his letter to the CDC, after having spent nearly 10 years
submitting over 100 Freedom of Information Acts to no avail.
This information is very damaging to the CDC, which has stated for years
that there are no studies linking the mercury of Thimerosal in vaccines
to autism.
In another recent testimony given by the CDC in the November 2012 Congressional
Hearing on Autism, they claimed there are no studies linking
Thimerosal to autism. Thimerosam however is still used today in the flu shot
that is administered to pregnant women and infants.
An Anti-vaccination group in Australia has defended an advert which appears to compare immunising children with being raped.
The Australian Vaccination Skeptics Network posted an image of a woman with a man threateningly holding his hand over her mouth on its Facebook page earlier today.
This information, so far, has been completely blacked out of the mainstream media.
EU-Digest
3/6/15
Pharmaceutical Industry: Do U.S. Consumers Foot the Bill for Cheap Drugs in Europe and Canada? - not really !
In an an article under the heading U.S. Consumers Foot the Bill for Cheap Drugs in Europe and Canada Megan McArdle
wrote in the Bloomberg View. "
A few days ago, when I remarked that U.S. pharmaceutical prices subsidize much of the research that benefits the rest of the world, I got various forms of push back, so it seems worth running, briefly, through the logic:
1. Both critics and boosters of pharma agree that prices are higher here than elsewhere.
2. Therefore, the U.S. accounts for a disproportionate share of pharmaceutical profits for companies that develop new drugs.*
3. Profits provide both incentive to develop new drugs and the cash with which to do so.
4. Drug companies are, in fact, needed to bring large numbers of drugs to market.
5. New drugs are valuable.
That’s not a very interesting argument, though it is one we’ll surely be having over and over again. But there was an interesting question asked in the comments: How do we make Europe and Canada and Japan bear part of the costs of drug development? I’m going to sound like a Negative Nellie here, but the answer is, we don’t.
Let’s start by pointing out that the problem is not that we’re paying Canada’s “share” of development for the drugs we get. This is not how markets work. Drug companies charge what the market will bear for the drugs they make, both here and abroad. Here, where the market is largely private, that share is small. Abroad, where the “negotiation” consists of governments telling you what they are willing to pay, even as you know that they can always change the law to shorten your patent term so that other countries can manufacture your product, using your research for free.
There’s more to it than that, to be fair. Yet when negotiating with other governments, pharmaceutical companies operate at a severe disadvantage, not because the governments’ buying power is so vast (the national health-care systems of Canada and many European countries cover fewer people than Aetna), but because the people you’re negotiating with can change the rules under which your product gets sold. At any point they can say, like Lord Vader, “I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it any further.”
But if Canada started paying more, that wouldn’t mean we’d pay less. Drug companies are charging what they think we will pay. The result of Canadians and Europeans paying less is not that we pay more for drugs; it’s that fewer drugs get developed. To the extent that they are harming us, it is in hindering the development of cures or better treatments that we are missing, and don’t even know about.
Unfortunately, this is a classic case of Bastiat’s dilemma. It is easy for each country’s government to see the high prices that people are paying and intervene to lower them. It is hard for each country’s government, much less its citizens, to envision the new medical treatments that they might get if they paid more for drugs. So their incentives are heavily skewed toward controlling the price here and now, even if that means losing future cures.
Drug development is essentially a giant international collective-action problem. The U.S. has kept it from being a total disaster because we don’t have good centralized control of our insurance market, and our political system is pretty disorganized and easy to lobby. If that changes -- and maybe we just changed it! -- we’ll knock down the prices of drugs to near the marginal cost using government fiat, and I expect that innovation in this sector will grind to a halt. Stuff will still be coming out of academic labs, but no one is going to take those promising targets and turn them into actual drugs.
I don’t expect this to happen right away, but if the Affordable Care Act does result in some form of pharmaceutical price controls, I think we’ll see the death of Big Pharma, after which we will realize, much to the surprise of folks such as Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, that they did a bit more than just printing pretty labels and inventing new cures for baldness.
There are some promising alternatives. The main two that have been suggested are prizes and having the U.S. government get into the business of developing actual drugs, rather than just funding basic research. I’m in favor of trying both of these approaches. But so far, prizes have not proved themselves as ways to fund what is essentially commercial product development -- at least, not at the same level that patents do. Nor has the government. As we’ve just seen from the government’s attempt to develop a Travelocity-like site for health insurance, there are reasons to think that government might not be very good at that sort of thing. I don’t mean to slur the government -- governments absolutely have developed drugs in the past. But these are not the majority, and government processes often make it hard to do things that companies do easily."
Our take on this editorial in Bloomberg by Megan McArdle is that the headline and the facts in the story at times somewhat confusing because it gives the impression that all research is done in the US by US companies and institutions. Fact is that among the 10 top global pharmaceutical companies 5 come from the US and 5 from Europe.
These are: 1) Pfizer, USA 2) Novartis, Switzerland 3) Sanofi, France 4) Roche Holding, Switzerland 5) Merck & Co., USA 6) GlaxoSmithKline, UK, 7) AstraZeneca, UK 8) Eli Lilly & Co., USA, 9) Abbott Laboratories, USA 10) McKesson, USA
On the other hand one can fully agree with the statement on the Affordable Care Act, which notes "that if the Affordable Care Act result in some form of pharmaceutical price controls, I think we’ll see the death of Big Pharma, after which we will realize, much to the surprise of folks such as Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, that they did a bit more than just printing pretty labels and inventing new cures for baldness".
Anyway,at present, whatever way you look at it, the pricing structure differences between the US, Canada and Europe are abnormal, to say the least.
EU-Digest
A few days ago, when I remarked that U.S. pharmaceutical prices subsidize much of the research that benefits the rest of the world, I got various forms of push back, so it seems worth running, briefly, through the logic:
1. Both critics and boosters of pharma agree that prices are higher here than elsewhere.
2. Therefore, the U.S. accounts for a disproportionate share of pharmaceutical profits for companies that develop new drugs.*
3. Profits provide both incentive to develop new drugs and the cash with which to do so.
4. Drug companies are, in fact, needed to bring large numbers of drugs to market.
5. New drugs are valuable.
That’s not a very interesting argument, though it is one we’ll surely be having over and over again. But there was an interesting question asked in the comments: How do we make Europe and Canada and Japan bear part of the costs of drug development? I’m going to sound like a Negative Nellie here, but the answer is, we don’t.
Let’s start by pointing out that the problem is not that we’re paying Canada’s “share” of development for the drugs we get. This is not how markets work. Drug companies charge what the market will bear for the drugs they make, both here and abroad. Here, where the market is largely private, that share is small. Abroad, where the “negotiation” consists of governments telling you what they are willing to pay, even as you know that they can always change the law to shorten your patent term so that other countries can manufacture your product, using your research for free.
There’s more to it than that, to be fair. Yet when negotiating with other governments, pharmaceutical companies operate at a severe disadvantage, not because the governments’ buying power is so vast (the national health-care systems of Canada and many European countries cover fewer people than Aetna), but because the people you’re negotiating with can change the rules under which your product gets sold. At any point they can say, like Lord Vader, “I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it any further.”
But if Canada started paying more, that wouldn’t mean we’d pay less. Drug companies are charging what they think we will pay. The result of Canadians and Europeans paying less is not that we pay more for drugs; it’s that fewer drugs get developed. To the extent that they are harming us, it is in hindering the development of cures or better treatments that we are missing, and don’t even know about.
Unfortunately, this is a classic case of Bastiat’s dilemma. It is easy for each country’s government to see the high prices that people are paying and intervene to lower them. It is hard for each country’s government, much less its citizens, to envision the new medical treatments that they might get if they paid more for drugs. So their incentives are heavily skewed toward controlling the price here and now, even if that means losing future cures.
Drug development is essentially a giant international collective-action problem. The U.S. has kept it from being a total disaster because we don’t have good centralized control of our insurance market, and our political system is pretty disorganized and easy to lobby. If that changes -- and maybe we just changed it! -- we’ll knock down the prices of drugs to near the marginal cost using government fiat, and I expect that innovation in this sector will grind to a halt. Stuff will still be coming out of academic labs, but no one is going to take those promising targets and turn them into actual drugs.
I don’t expect this to happen right away, but if the Affordable Care Act does result in some form of pharmaceutical price controls, I think we’ll see the death of Big Pharma, after which we will realize, much to the surprise of folks such as Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, that they did a bit more than just printing pretty labels and inventing new cures for baldness.
There are some promising alternatives. The main two that have been suggested are prizes and having the U.S. government get into the business of developing actual drugs, rather than just funding basic research. I’m in favor of trying both of these approaches. But so far, prizes have not proved themselves as ways to fund what is essentially commercial product development -- at least, not at the same level that patents do. Nor has the government. As we’ve just seen from the government’s attempt to develop a Travelocity-like site for health insurance, there are reasons to think that government might not be very good at that sort of thing. I don’t mean to slur the government -- governments absolutely have developed drugs in the past. But these are not the majority, and government processes often make it hard to do things that companies do easily."
Our take on this editorial in Bloomberg by Megan McArdle is that the headline and the facts in the story at times somewhat confusing because it gives the impression that all research is done in the US by US companies and institutions. Fact is that among the 10 top global pharmaceutical companies 5 come from the US and 5 from Europe.
These are: 1) Pfizer, USA 2) Novartis, Switzerland 3) Sanofi, France 4) Roche Holding, Switzerland 5) Merck & Co., USA 6) GlaxoSmithKline, UK, 7) AstraZeneca, UK 8) Eli Lilly & Co., USA, 9) Abbott Laboratories, USA 10) McKesson, USA
On the other hand one can fully agree with the statement on the Affordable Care Act, which notes "that if the Affordable Care Act result in some form of pharmaceutical price controls, I think we’ll see the death of Big Pharma, after which we will realize, much to the surprise of folks such as Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, that they did a bit more than just printing pretty labels and inventing new cures for baldness".
Anyway,at present, whatever way you look at it, the pricing structure differences between the US, Canada and Europe are abnormal, to say the least.
EU-Digest
2/9/15
USA: What happened to the Hippocratic Oath? Can Pharmaceutical And Medical Industry Still Be Trusted ?
 |
| Hippocratic Oath has been shoved under the mat? |
The oath is believed to have been written by ancient Greek Philsopher Hippocrates and dates back to 5th Century BC. When translated notable parts include to, “keep patients from harm and injustice”, and to practice medicine in both “purity and holiness”.
But are they keeping that Oath?
Undoubtedly there are more doctors who care about the quality of patient care over personal profit, but what about the professionals who are willing to take bribes to endorse a product?
In-between doctors and pharmaceutical companies are the little-known championers of the pharmaceutical industry- the drug reps.
According to Glassdoor the average Pharma sales rep made more than $80,000 last year while the average biotech rep pulled in $152,000 dollars a year- 6 times more than the average American citizen.
Pharma representatives rarely have any formal education in science with the majority holding a BA in the liberal arts or business.
A former rep for Eli Lily revealed that he was the only member of his team with a background in science, and that the majority of his coworkers were “former cheerleaders and ex-models”.
Base salaries begin at $60,000 for new reps and $150,000 for a seasoned biotech representative- but perks don’t stop there. Johnson & Johnson’s reps celebrated on internet forumswhen they were given a chance to partake in a new fleet of Audi A3’s, with a MSRP of over $27,000.
With commission ranging from 10-15%, a company car, free gas and bank account the job is undeniably sexy, but pharma reps aren’t the only ones who are benefitting from Big Pharma’s generosity.
Doctors who endorse their products routinely receive gifts as well. Medical giant Medtronic shocked the media when it was discovered they had bribed a team of 13 doctors $210 million over the course of 15 years to post favorable studies of the off-label use of their INFUSE bone graft.
Many patients who received the bone grafts became paralyzed or died from complications stemming from the uncontrollable bone growth.
Consequently large drug companies have grown "wealthy beyond imagination" through blockbuster drugs that depended on government-funded research—and by committing fraud.
Elisabeth Warren, a Democratic Senator recently noted that over the past 10 years, some of the US's wealthiest drug companies—those that capitalize on government research to generate billions of dollars in revenues through the sale of blockbuster drugs—have found another way to boost profits".
Warren said, in a prepared text of her speech at an event sponsored by the health care advocacy group Families USA. "They've been caught defrauding Medicare and Medicaid, withholding critical safety information about their drugs, marketing their drugs for uses that aren't approved, and giving doctors kickbacks for writing prescriptions for their drugs."
Democrats have largely laid off the pharmaceutical industry since the legislative debate over the Affordable Care Act, when drugmakers agreed to support the bill as long as it didn't include certain policies. And Warren—whose home state is home to several large drug companies—praised the industry's scientific advances.
But, said Warren, drug companies paid roughly $13 billion in settlements with the federal government
between 2007 and 2012. "That doesn't happen without serious wrongdoing."
After 1978 Bayer (a German Company) and other pharmaceutical companies produced Factor VIII and IX.
The product was designed for hemophiliacs, people who suffer from a genetic disorder whose blood can not clot to stave bleeding. As a result, even a minor cut could cause them to bleed out and lose dangerous levels of blood. Factor VII is harvested from the blood plasma of non-hemophiliacs, but to purportedly to cut costs Bayer harvested blood from pools of “high risk” individuals.
This included: prison populations, intravenous drug users and blood from clinics with a large amount of homosexual donors. Federal law also forbids the use of blood from an individual with a history of viral hepatitis- but Bayer and other companies failed to enact strict prerequisites for blood farming. As a result, thousands of hemophiliacs died from the HIV- tainted blood plasma.
Senator Warren said, "it seems that the biggest drug companies are increasingly playing by a different set of rules than everyone else," Warren said. "The government has kicked thousands of small and medium-sized physician practices out of the Medicare program for fraud, but not one of these major drug companies has ever been kicked out. The government convicts hundreds of people of health care fraud every year, but not one of these major drug company cases has even gone to trial."
Warren in a bill proposed to the Senate wants pharmaceutical companies to fund more of the basic research conducted by the National Institutes of Health. Many blockbuster drugs do stem, at least in part, from NIH research.
Under Warren's proposal, "the biggest and most successful drug companies" would have to contribute to the NIH's budget whenever they settle criminal accusations with the federal government. In addition to the fines that companies already pay, they would have to contribute 1 percent of their annual profits to the NIH for five years.
"It's like a swear jar: Whenever a huge drug company that is generating enormous profits as a result of federal research investments gets caught breaking the law—and wants off the hook—it has to put some money in the jar to help fund the next generation of medical research," Warren said.
If such a policy had been in place over the past five years, NIH would have seen a budget bump of about $6 billion—or 20 percent—per year, she said.
In the meantime, however, in the US, the boundaries between the drug companies, FDA, and doctors have became increasingly blurred. FDA officials sometimes move to jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, which means they may not want to burn their bridges with industry.
The same FDA officials who approve the drugs are responsible for monitoring them after they are on the market, which gives them an obvious disincentive to say that the drugs they earlier certified as safe were now unsafe.
Finally, the FDA gets input from outside advisory panels made up of doctors who are experts in their fields. Most of these doctors receive payments as consultants, research grants and support for travel to conferences from drug companies.
In some cases, the doctors are working as paid consultants to the same companies whose drugs are coming up for approval by their advisory committees.
The US is the only country in the world where you can turn on the TV and have an announcer tell you to go ‘ask your doctor’ for a drug.
Doctors often will give medications to patients even if they don’t think they need it. For example, one study showed that 54% of the time doctors will prescribe a specific brand and type of medication if patients ask for it.
Drugs on the average cost twice as much in the US than in Canada or Europe . US Dr's also prescribe more drugs to their "patients" than any other nation in the world
The argument drug manufacturers make for the high cost of their products is that the money supports research and development of new life-saving medicine. And they also say that expensive advertising is needed not to sell drugs, but to educate doctors and patients. Indeed, a whopping 80% of their budgets is used for marketing and advertising, certainly not education.
Some things definitely are broken and need fixing in the US Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry.
A Special EU-Digest Report
10/9/14
The Parmaceutical Industry: The Real Reason Big Pharma Rips Us Off - by Robert Reich
According to a new federal database put
online last week, US pharmaceutical companies and device makers paid
doctors some $380 million in speaking and consulting fees over a
five-month period in 2013.
Some doctors received over half a million dollars each, and others got millions of dollars in royalties from products they helped develop. Doctors claim these payments have no effect on what they prescribe. But why would drug companies shell out all this money if it didn’t provide them a healthy return on their investment?
America spends a fortune on drugs, more per person than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations. Of the estimated $2.7 trillion America spends annually on health care, drugs account for 10 percent of the total.
The US Government pays some of this tab through Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. But we pick up the tab indirectly through our taxes. We pay the rest of it directly, through higher co-payments, deductibles, and premiums. Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.
Another technique is called “product hopping” —making small and insignificant changes in a drug whose patent is about to expire, so it’s technically new.
For example, last February, before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer’s, Forest Laboratories announced it would stop selling the existing tablet form of in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR.
The capsules were just a reformulated version of the tablet. But even the minor change prevented pharmacists from substituting generic versions of the tablet.
Result: higher profits for Forest Labs and higher costs for you and me.
Another technique is for drug companies to continue to aggressively advertise prescription brands long after their 20-year patents have expired, so patients ask their doctors for them. Many doctors will comply. America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.
Note EU-Digest - there seems to be a similar situation developing in the EU if legislators do not react to this urgently.
Read more: Robert Reich: The Real Reason Big Pharma Rips Us Off | Alternet
Some doctors received over half a million dollars each, and others got millions of dollars in royalties from products they helped develop. Doctors claim these payments have no effect on what they prescribe. But why would drug companies shell out all this money if it didn’t provide them a healthy return on their investment?
America spends a fortune on drugs, more per person than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations. Of the estimated $2.7 trillion America spends annually on health care, drugs account for 10 percent of the total.
The US Government pays some of this tab through Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. But we pick up the tab indirectly through our taxes. We pay the rest of it directly, through higher co-payments, deductibles, and premiums. Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.
Another technique is called “product hopping” —making small and insignificant changes in a drug whose patent is about to expire, so it’s technically new.
For example, last February, before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer’s, Forest Laboratories announced it would stop selling the existing tablet form of in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR.
The capsules were just a reformulated version of the tablet. But even the minor change prevented pharmacists from substituting generic versions of the tablet.
Result: higher profits for Forest Labs and higher costs for you and me.
Another technique is for drug companies to continue to aggressively advertise prescription brands long after their 20-year patents have expired, so patients ask their doctors for them. Many doctors will comply. America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.
Note EU-Digest - there seems to be a similar situation developing in the EU if legislators do not react to this urgently.
Read more: Robert Reich: The Real Reason Big Pharma Rips Us Off | Alternet
7/23/14
Britain: Corporate Bribery Probe: Glaxo link to probe
Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline publishes second quarter results on
Wednesday as a tangled web of allegations linked to a bribery probe by
Chinese authorities continues to hang over the UK-based company.
It comes shortly after a British investigator and his American wife
who were hired by the company learned they were to face trial in the
country charged with illegally obtaining and selling private
information.The arrest of Peter Humphrey and Yingzeng Yu last year coincided with a Chinese probe into allegations that Glaxo staff had funnelled hundreds of millions of pounds through travel agencies to bribe doctors and health officials.
The couple's firm ChinaWhys had been asked to look into the origin of a sex tape involving Glaxo's China manager Mark Reilly, who has himself been accused by Chinese authorities in relation to the bribery case.
Glaxo has said it asked the investigators to look into a "serious breach of privacy and security" relating to Mr Reilly but that the firm was not hired "to investigate the substance of allegations of misconduct" made by a whistleblower.
In May, the pharmaceuticals firm disclosed that its commercial practices had come under "formal criminal investigation" by Britain's Serious Fraud Office.
Sheridan Adams, investment research manager at The Share Centre, said: "Although Chinese revenues only account for less than 5% of the global total, negative press coverage will not be welcomed and investors may want to hear from management on the matter."
Glaxo's second quarter update is the first since the takeover frenzy over US rival Pfizer's ultimately unsuccessful bid to swallow up Britain's AstraZeneca for £69 million amid a public outcry.
The merger spotlight in the sector has since fallen on Hampshire-based Shire and its American suitor AbbVie.
Glaxo has kept out of any speculation around such deals, after unveiling a complex three-part transaction with Novartis in May.
It will see the two firms create a £6.5 billion consumer healthcare powerhouse from its Aquafresh and Beechams together with antiseptic range Savlon and cough and cold brand Tixylix from Novartis.
The deal also saw Glaxo sell its oncology portfolio from Novartis and buy the Swiss firm's vaccines business.
Read more: Glaxo link to probe | Herald Scotland
5/30/14
Pharmaceutical Industry: .Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca
US drugmaker Pfizer said Monday it is calling off its controversial bid to acquire British rival AstraZeneca. The announcement came after a 69.4 billion-pound ($116.8 billion) offer rejected by AstraZeneca last week.
“Following the AstraZeneca board's rejection of the proposal,
Pfizer announces that it does not intend to make an offer for AstraZeneca,” Pfizer said in a statement.
Pfizer CEO Ian Read said his company's last offer represented what he believed to be the full value of the company.
Leif Johansson, chairman of AstraZeneca, said he was pleased with the retreat.
“We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company,” Johansson said.
rEAD MORE; Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca | Business | DW.DE | 26.05.2014
“Following the AstraZeneca board's rejection of the proposal,
Pfizer announces that it does not intend to make an offer for AstraZeneca,” Pfizer said in a statement.
Pfizer CEO Ian Read said his company's last offer represented what he believed to be the full value of the company.
Leif Johansson, chairman of AstraZeneca, said he was pleased with the retreat.
“We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company,” Johansson said.
rEAD MORE; Pfizer calls it quits on AstraZeneca | Business | DW.DE | 26.05.2014
4/14/14
Pharmaceutical Retail: Investor group pressures Walgreens to move HQ to Europe - by Peter Frost
Walgreen Co. is under pressure from a group of shareholders to move
its corporate headquarters to Europe to take advantage of tax benefits,
the Financial Times reported.
Shareholders owning about 5 percent of the company’s shares lobbied Deerfield-based Walgreen’s management to use its 45 percent ownership stake in Swiss-based Alliance Boots GmbH to change its legal base to Europe, the financial daily said.
Walgreen, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, plans to complete the takeover of Alliance Boots, which runs Europe’s largest pharmacy chain, in 2015.
Read more: Investor group pressures Walgreens to move HQ to Europe - chicagotribune.com
Shareholders owning about 5 percent of the company’s shares lobbied Deerfield-based Walgreen’s management to use its 45 percent ownership stake in Swiss-based Alliance Boots GmbH to change its legal base to Europe, the financial daily said.
Walgreen, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, plans to complete the takeover of Alliance Boots, which runs Europe’s largest pharmacy chain, in 2015.
Read more: Investor group pressures Walgreens to move HQ to Europe - chicagotribune.com
3/5/14
Pharmaceutical Industry: Novartis says will appeal 92 million euro cartel fine in Italy
NovartisBSE -0.43 % said it will appeal against a 92 million euro
($126.4 million) fine levied in Italy over alleged anti-competitive
practices relating to its eye drug Lucentis and crosstown rival Roche's
cancer drug Avastin.
"Novartis will use its legal rights of defense according to due process and will appeal," Novartis said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We strongly deny allegations about anti-competitive practices between Novartis and Roche in Italy."
Novartis said it will appeal against a 92 million euro ($126.4 million) fine levied in Italy over alleged anti-competitive practices relating to its eye drug Lucentis and crosstown rival Roche's cancer drug Avastin."Novartis will use its legal rights of defense according to due process and will appeal," Novartis said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We strongly deny allegations about anti-competitive practices between Novartis and Roche in Italy."
Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/31466975.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/31466975.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
NovartisBSE -0.43 % said it will appeal against a 92 million euro
($126.4 million) fine levied in Italy over alleged anti-competitive
practices relating to its eye drug Lucentis and crosstown rival Roche's
cancer drug Avastin.
"Novartis will use its legal rights of defense according to due process and will appeal," Novartis said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We strongly deny allegations about anti-competitive practices between Novartis and Roche in Italy."
"Novartis will use its legal rights of defense according to due process and will appeal," Novartis said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We strongly deny allegations about anti-competitive practices between Novartis and Roche in Italy."
"Novartis will use its legal rights of defense according to due process and will appeal," Novartis said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We strongly deny allegations about anti-competitive practices between Novartis and Roche in Italy."
Read more: Novartis says will appeal 92 million euro cartel fine in Italy - The Economic Times
6/20/13
Pharmaceutical Industry: Europe Fines Drug Companies for Delaying Generics - by James Kanter
Europe’s top antitrust enforcer continued a crackdown on drug company efforts to keep low-cost generic versions of their medicines off the market, a campaign that is taking place on both sides of the Atlantic.
Read more: Europe Fines Drug Companies for Delaying Generics - NYTimes.com
On Wednesday, the European Commission fined a Danish pharmaceutical company and a number of generic producers a total of 146 million euros, or $195 million.
The commission said that Lundbeck of Denmark colluded with companies like Ranbaxy of India and Merck of Germany in 2002 and 2003 to delay market entry of a less expensive generic version of a blockbuster antidepressant called citalopram. JoaquÃn Almunia, the European commissioner for competition, said that Lundbeck also destroyed significant quantities of the low-cost version of the drug.
Read more: Europe Fines Drug Companies for Delaying Generics - NYTimes.com
2/25/13
US Health Care - a warning for European medical free marketeers: "the free market in American medicine is a myth"
Those who work in the health care industry and those who argue over health care policy seem inured to the shock. When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?
What are the reasons, good or bad, that cancer means a half-million- or million-dollar tab for people living in America? Why should a trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion bring a bill that can exceed the cost of a semester of college? What makes a single dose of even the most wonderful wonder drug cost thousands of dollars? Why does simple lab work done during a few days in a hospital cost more than a car? And what is so different about the medical ecosystem that causes technology advances to drive bills up instead of down?
In hundreds of small and midsize cities across the country — from Stamford, Conn., to Marlton, N.J., to Oklahoma City — the American health care market has transformed tax-exempt “nonprofit” hospitals into the towns’ most profitable businesses and largest employers, often presided over by the regions’ most richly compensated executives. And in our largest cities, the system offers lavish paychecks even to midlevel hospital managers, like the 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million.
Taken as a whole, these powerful institutions and the bills they churn out dominate the nation’s economy and put demands on taxpayers to a degree unequaled anywhere else on earth. In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries. Yet in every measurable way, the results our health care system produces are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.
According to one of a series of exhaustive studies done by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm, we spend more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. We may be shocked at the $60 billion price tag for cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy. We spent almost that much last week on health care. We spend more every year on artificial knees and hips than what Hollywood collects at the box office. We spend two or three times that much on durable medical devices like canes and wheelchairs, in part because a heavily lobbied Congress forces Medicare to pay 25% to 75% more for this equipment than it would cost at Walmart.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 10 of the 20 occupations that will grow the fastest in the U.S. by 2020 are related to health care. America’s largest city may be commonly thought of as the world’s financial-services capital, but of New York’s 18 largest private employers, eight are hospitals and four are banks.
Employing all those people in the cause of curing the sick is, of course, not anything to be ashamed of. But the drag on our overall economy that comes with taxpayers, employers and consumers spending so much more than is spent in any other country for the same product is unsustainable. Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.
The health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.
When you crunch data compiled by McKinsey and other researchers, the big picture looks like this: We’re likely to spend $2.8 trillion this year on health care. That $2.8 trillion is likely to be $750 billion, or 27%, more than we would spend if we spent the same per capita as other developed countries, even after adjusting for the relatively high per capita income in the U.S. vs. those other countries. Of the total $2.8 trillion that will be spent on health care, about $800 billion will be paid by the federal government through the Medicare insurance program for the disabled and those 65 and older and the Medicaid program, which provides care for the poor.
That $800 billion, which keeps rising far faster than inflation and the gross domestic product, is what’s driving the federal deficit. The other $2 trillion will be paid mostly by private health-insurance companies and individuals who have no insurance or who will pay some portion of the bills covered by their insurance. This is what’s increasingly burdening businesses that pay for their employees’ health insurance and forcing individuals to pay so much in out-of-pocket expenses.
Note EU-Digest: this in depth report by Time Magazine should be read by every politician in Europe calling for a free market based health-care system. As the American model of healthcare has proven it does not provide affordable healthcare.
Read more: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.co
What are the reasons, good or bad, that cancer means a half-million- or million-dollar tab for people living in America? Why should a trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion bring a bill that can exceed the cost of a semester of college? What makes a single dose of even the most wonderful wonder drug cost thousands of dollars? Why does simple lab work done during a few days in a hospital cost more than a car? And what is so different about the medical ecosystem that causes technology advances to drive bills up instead of down?
In hundreds of small and midsize cities across the country — from Stamford, Conn., to Marlton, N.J., to Oklahoma City — the American health care market has transformed tax-exempt “nonprofit” hospitals into the towns’ most profitable businesses and largest employers, often presided over by the regions’ most richly compensated executives. And in our largest cities, the system offers lavish paychecks even to midlevel hospital managers, like the 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million.
Taken as a whole, these powerful institutions and the bills they churn out dominate the nation’s economy and put demands on taxpayers to a degree unequaled anywhere else on earth. In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries. Yet in every measurable way, the results our health care system produces are no better and often worse than the outcomes in those countries.
According to one of a series of exhaustive studies done by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm, we spend more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. We may be shocked at the $60 billion price tag for cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy. We spent almost that much last week on health care. We spend more every year on artificial knees and hips than what Hollywood collects at the box office. We spend two or three times that much on durable medical devices like canes and wheelchairs, in part because a heavily lobbied Congress forces Medicare to pay 25% to 75% more for this equipment than it would cost at Walmart.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 10 of the 20 occupations that will grow the fastest in the U.S. by 2020 are related to health care. America’s largest city may be commonly thought of as the world’s financial-services capital, but of New York’s 18 largest private employers, eight are hospitals and four are banks.
Employing all those people in the cause of curing the sick is, of course, not anything to be ashamed of. But the drag on our overall economy that comes with taxpayers, employers and consumers spending so much more than is spent in any other country for the same product is unsustainable. Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.
The health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.
When you crunch data compiled by McKinsey and other researchers, the big picture looks like this: We’re likely to spend $2.8 trillion this year on health care. That $2.8 trillion is likely to be $750 billion, or 27%, more than we would spend if we spent the same per capita as other developed countries, even after adjusting for the relatively high per capita income in the U.S. vs. those other countries. Of the total $2.8 trillion that will be spent on health care, about $800 billion will be paid by the federal government through the Medicare insurance program for the disabled and those 65 and older and the Medicaid program, which provides care for the poor.
That $800 billion, which keeps rising far faster than inflation and the gross domestic product, is what’s driving the federal deficit. The other $2 trillion will be paid mostly by private health-insurance companies and individuals who have no insurance or who will pay some portion of the bills covered by their insurance. This is what’s increasingly burdening businesses that pay for their employees’ health insurance and forcing individuals to pay so much in out-of-pocket expenses.
Note EU-Digest: this in depth report by Time Magazine should be read by every politician in Europe calling for a free market based health-care system. As the American model of healthcare has proven it does not provide affordable healthcare.
Read more: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.co
2/2/13
Corporate Crime - Pharmaceutical Industry: Europe Says Johnson & Johnson Paid to Delay Generic Fentanyl - by James Kanter and Katie Thomas
European antitrust officials on Thursday accused the drug giants Johnson and Johnson; Johnson and Novartis of colluding to delay the availability of a less expensive generic version of a powerful medication often used to ease severe pain in cancer patients.
Agreements to delay the introduction of generic drugs have come under heightened scrutiny in both Europe and the United States in recent years, with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic concluding that such deals are anticompetitive.
In the United States, the Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the issue in March. Typically, such arrangements are a result of patent disputes between brand-name and generic drug makers, although no such dispute was mentioned in the most recent case involving Johnson and Johnson; Johnson and Novartis.
Read more: Europe Says Johnson & Johnson Paid to Delay Generic Fentanyl - NYTimes.com
The case focuses on monthly payments that a Netherlands-based subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson made to Sandoz, a unit of the Swiss company Novartis. While the companies have said the payments were legitimate, the European Union’s antitrust chief said on Thursday that the money probably changed hands to keep lower-cost versions of the drug, called fentanyl, off the market in the Netherlands.
European authorities are “determined to fight undue delays in the market entry of generic medicines,” JoaquÃn Almunia, the European competition commissioner, said in a statement on Thursday.
Agreements to delay the introduction of generic drugs have come under heightened scrutiny in both Europe and the United States in recent years, with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic concluding that such deals are anticompetitive.
In the United States, the Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the issue in March. Typically, such arrangements are a result of patent disputes between brand-name and generic drug makers, although no such dispute was mentioned in the most recent case involving Johnson and Johnson; Johnson and Novartis.
Read more: Europe Says Johnson & Johnson Paid to Delay Generic Fentanyl - NYTimes.com
10/31/12
European Health Care Systems: Mistrust puts pharmaceutical industry in the spotlight
The European healthcare system is struggling to cope with low levels of transparency and trust in the pharmaceutical sector, according to 97% of doctors, industry professionals and policymakers attending a workshop at the Gastein Health Forum yesterday (4 October).
"North Korea would be proud of you!" said workshop moderator John Bowis, a former MEP and president of stakeholder group Health First Europe, after conducting the straw poll in a session addressing transparency between the public, health professionals and industry in the Austrian resort.
Thomas Heynisch, an official with the EU executive's enterprise department, told delegates that the Commission would publish new corporate social responsibility guidelines in early 2013 to tackle issues of trust and ethics in the pharmaceutical sector, and access to medicines in Europe.
This was prompted because the EU executive believed there was "a level of mistrust, particularly between public authorities and the pharma industry. "The Commission wants to move beyond codes of conduct, but not to introduce new legislation, rather we want guiding principles which can be a source of inspiration for those working within and beyond the pharma industry," Heynisch said, explaining that enforcement of the new guidelines will be carried out at national level.
Read more: Mistrust puts pharmaceutical industry in the spotlight | EurActiv
"North Korea would be proud of you!" said workshop moderator John Bowis, a former MEP and president of stakeholder group Health First Europe, after conducting the straw poll in a session addressing transparency between the public, health professionals and industry in the Austrian resort.
Thomas Heynisch, an official with the EU executive's enterprise department, told delegates that the Commission would publish new corporate social responsibility guidelines in early 2013 to tackle issues of trust and ethics in the pharmaceutical sector, and access to medicines in Europe.
This was prompted because the EU executive believed there was "a level of mistrust, particularly between public authorities and the pharma industry. "The Commission wants to move beyond codes of conduct, but not to introduce new legislation, rather we want guiding principles which can be a source of inspiration for those working within and beyond the pharma industry," Heynisch said, explaining that enforcement of the new guidelines will be carried out at national level.
Read more: Mistrust puts pharmaceutical industry in the spotlight | EurActiv
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