Like it or not we still have capitalism in the United States, a concept that completely frustrates liberals and progressives.
When was the last time Canada produced a breakthrough drug?
Those of us who have been part of this industry understand fully, that if this price controls go through it is all over for the United State’s Pharmaceutical Industry.
It’s not so much an issue of how much we spend, but when we spend it.
Through Medicare, the government with our tax dollars virtually burns money in the last months or year of a patient’s life rather than focusing on annual examinations and wellness care.
The pipelines will dry up.
Since the passage of Obama’s Health Care Rationing Act, patients on ObamaCare have found Top Cancer Centers are not always included. (Source)
Two additional stumbling blocks to having Clinical trials cancer completed.
- There are far more patients unqualified because their stage and grade of their tumor upon presentation thus the difficulty with enrollment. (Source)
- Time is money, studies and adult in the order of 95% refuse to enter clinical trials. If they choose to take part, less than 20% will complete their trial.(Source)
The same goes for other socialist countries, each of which provides funding 
for the pharmaceutical industry.
The cost of drug development is staggering.
When the hundreds of candidates that fail to make the market as well as the litigious societies in which they are sold, it’s amazing they don’t cost more.
Nine of ten drug candidates fail to make it to the marketplace. (Source)
The little-known truth is that companies sell their products to different countries at prices the country can afford to pay. (Source)
As an example, the same drug would likely cost next to nothing in Mexico.
Capitalism ensures competition and in doing so as newer similar drugs are made available prices do come down.
Another option might be to extend the patent life of drugs with an agreement of a 10% decrease per year once the cost of research and development have been recovered.
One thing is absolutely certain.
If the desired goal is to increase rather than decrease drug prices, fools like Elijah Cummings and his whining must not be given a second thought.
Please watch the Ted Talk by a young pharmacist who took the hotel/airline booking scenario to a new level with prescription drugs.
A study found that adult patients between the ages of 22 and 65 who were newly diagnosed with one of several types of cancer, breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, gastric or bile duct, were 20 percent to 50 percent more likely to die from the disease if they were initially treated at a place other than a NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.
That is why my friend Carolyn who helped me with this article and I only called on NCI core grant comprehensive cancers.
Market Watch
Emma Quart
Sept 28, 2017
Cummings said the president could ‘make a deal’ to lower Zinbryta’s price.
Dream on fool, that’s not his job.
Perhaps in another country where you and your ilk belong.
The enemy of capitalism House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) urged President Donald Trump to help lower the price of a $90,000-a-year multiple sclerosis drug on Thursday.
In a series of tweets, Cummings said that Trump could “make a deal” on Biogen BIIB, +0.09% and AbbVie’s ABBV, +5.69% Zinbryta, because the drug was developed using technology licensed from the federal government.
“If they refuse, you can revoke their license or license the drug to more companies to lower the price today!” Cummings, who met with Trump to discuss drug prices earlier this year, said in a tweet. “Shouldn’t cost $87k per year!”
Zinbryta was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in May of 2016 for relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease that disrupts the central nervous system and affects about 2.3 million people worldwide.
The nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services two weeks ago asking it to consider several options to lower the drug’s price, a letter that Cummings referred to on Thursday.
See the entire article below.
U.S. prices of Zinbryta are higher than those in other countries, including 2.8 times higher than Norway and Denmark and 3.8 times higher than Switzerland, according to the letter.
Under one option, called “march-in” rights, the government could revoke Zinbryta’s patent and license it to another company; the government could also simply end the license, the KEI letter said.
Read more: This route to limiting drug prices is a dead end, analysts say
Cummings has previously shown interest in U.S. drug prices, meeting with Trump to discuss the subject earlier this year and launching an investigation with Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) last month into the prices of multiple sclerosis drugs.
Zinbryta was one of the MS drugs the congressmen referred to, alongside other Biogen drugs and products from Bayer BAYRY, +0.91% Novartis NOVN, +0.18% Roche RHHBY, +0.28% Sanofi SAN, -0.62% and Teva TEVA, -2.67%
At least one of Zinbryta’s clinical trials was conducted by a unit of the National Institutes of Health, according to the letter, and the drug is being studied in nearly 50 clinical trials funded by the federal government.
Zinbryta “is just a really egregious example of excessive pricing,” said KEI counsel Andrew Goldman. “Trump campaigned on promises to lower the cost of drugs, so we want to hold him to that.”
KEI has not heard back from HHS since it sent the letter, Goldman said.
While Trump spoke frequently about plans to bring down drug prices while he was campaigning, the rhetoric has largely disappeared since he took office, and many investors have stopped believing the threats.
KEI has previously urged the government to use march-in rights on expensive drugs, including on Japan’s Astellas Pharma Inc. 4503, +0.04% and Pfizer’s Medivation Inc.’s PFE, +0.82% prostate cancer drug Xtandi last year.
However, the NIH has previously declined to use march-in rights to keep down drug prices, including in the case of Xtandi.
Biogen, AbbVie and a Department of Health and Human Services senior adviser did not immediately return MarketWatch’s request for comment.
THE END
JCscuba
Jim Campbell's 