by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jan 31, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
Due to its lobbying efforts against drug importation reform to lower medication costs and funding of groups that mislead Americans about online pharmacies, scaring them away from safe and affordable medication sold outside the U.S., we often criticize Big Pharma on this blog. Speaking somewhat personally, I question myself sometimes whether they are deserving of such constant criticism. And then I read Daniel Hoffman from Philly.com in “Drug Prices: Higher and Higher” – and I’m reminded that they are!
Big Pharma is a on global government relations blitzkrieg to pressure countries into raising drug prices, spouting nonsense that the higher drug prices are supported by lower health care costs overall. Dr. Hoffman writes about pharma’s efforts in Germany to end a practice that enables doctors and other healthcare professionals to determine if new medications are truly an advance over old ones and merit higher drug prices. If they don’t then the government insurance plans will not reimburse for those products at a higher rate than older, proven medications. Seems fair!
Dr. Hoffman writes that India, with an incredibly dynamic pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, fights back against what that country views as overly aggressive intellectual property claims by Western drug companies. Sometimes India even views those patents as a threat to public health, and when it does it issues a “compulsory license” – the right to manufacture a generic even though there’s a patent in place.
I contend that this tactic can be abused by governments pressured by their own pharmaceutical industries – such as India. However, sometimes they are needed to save lives. What made me sick was a comment made by the CEO of Bayer, Marijib Dekkers, about India’s issuing a compulsory license for the drug Nexavar, which treats late stage kidney cancer. I’d prefer to quote a long section from Hoffman’s piece:
“We did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians,” Marijn Dekkers declared with unconcealed disdain. “We developed it for western patients who can afford it.”
A spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders later claimed that Dekkers represents ” ‘everything that is wrong’ with the multinational pharmaceutical industry.” (See here.)
That may be one way of looking at it. The other is that Dekkers is just more candid in admitting that pharma is all about making money and if millions of people have to die as a result, that’s just the way it is.
So are we being too hard on Big Pharma? The answer is no.
Tagged with: Bayer, Daniel Hoffman, Nexavar
by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Dec 5, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
A recent blog post on Philly.com by pharmaceutical industry expert Daniel Hoffman, Ph.D., exposes the hypocrisy of pharma’s addictions to high U.S. drug prices and deceptive marketing. Dr. Hoffman asserts that because the pharmaceutical industry is doing a bad job at generating revenues with new and innovative medications, and even flailing in its “me-too” drug business model, it has shifted to “economic hypocrisy and legal sophistry” to protect and generate revenue. Its shift may also be caused by increasing use of generics and compulsory licensing (allowing generic competition in spite of current patents), as well as the flat-out uproar against high drug prices, especially in the U.S.
Dr. Hoffman used data from our “American Made; Cheaper Abroad” series to highlight the incredible price gap between domestic and foreign prices of American made drugs. A price gap should exist; there’s nothing wrong with companies setting different prices in different countries. Poorer countries pay lower prices, and richer countries pay higher prices. The problem is that drug prices are excessively high in the U.S., so much so that they are often unaffordable for tens of millions of middle class Americans. The pharmaceutical industry takes advantage of a global economy and free trade agreements to keep manufacturing costs down and maximize patent terms. Despite reaping the rewards of globalization, the industry continues to try to prevent consumers from doing so, as exemplified by its efforts to stop Maine’s progressive law that facilitates safe personal drug importation. The industry’s bogus safety arguments about personal drug importation failed to stop the law from passing and now the drug and U.S. pharmacy industries are turning to the courts to protect profits.
Dr. Hoffman explains other legal ploys recently used by pharma, primarily to defend against charges of deceptive marketing practices. Johnson & Johnson, claiming its rights of due process were violated, tried to invalidate a request for documents by the City of Chicago in part because the city used an outside law firm that would receive a percentage of any settlement. In other words, J&J argued that by earning a percentage of a potential settlement, the law firm’s incentive to win was too strong and thus unfair to J&J! Facing similar charges, Merck argued against the Kentucky Attorney General’s similar arrangement with an outside law firm. A judge ruled against Merck’s complaint.
To quote the author, “So pharma vigorously seeks justice from the legal system when it tries to prevent foreign countries from exercising compulsory licensing (i.e. breaking patents), while it also claims the public’s representatives shouldn’t be allowed to obtain first-rate legal counsel.” Pharma is trying to create an unfair playing field, both in the legal area and within the global economy.
Tagged with: American Made Prescriptions Are Cheaper Abroad, Daniel Hoffman, Johnson and Johnson, Merck
