By Jim Campbell
July 11, 2018
For his part, the president can’t possible understand the cost of research and development faced by companies attempting to develop and eventually get FDA approval for drug candidates they hope to one day market.
Has he consulted anyone who doesn’t have a bias on the number of dry well a company will drill before the come up with an actual product?
Anytime that Trump is on the same side a Bernie Sanders, the admitted socialist should make we the people question the president’s motives.
Spoken like a true totalitarian dictator.
What place is it for the federal government to establish prices on any companies product?
Trump’s words on this topic are unconstitutional, pure and simple. (Source)
If the federal government could get along with this nonsense, with their lust to control our lives and fortunes would they likely ever stop?
Likely not.
Of course Trump is prone to exaggerate.
Trump is acting like he is in favor of a one size fits all drug formulary.
This is the same thing Obama attempted to do.
Question for Mr. Trump:
Would he build one of his lavish hotels on unstable ground?
Trump International Hotel-Dubai
How about a golf course requiring hundreds of thousands of metric tons of dirt as fill before you built another golf course built in a swamp land.
Of course he would select another location at half the cost.
Trump golf course: Miami, Florida
Wouldn’t you select another site?
I have no dog in this fight, owning no Pfizer stock who Trump seems to gather great joy in attacking.
He has my phone number as I’ve contributed to his campaign and other requests.
I know where the bones are buried, the good the bad and the ugly, feel free to consult with me.
Like the president, I will take nothing for my time and effort.
In, closing, if he continue to bash an industry that is one of the most profitable in the U.S. and the taxes the companies and their employees pay, can you seriously consider yourself a capitalist.
If a progressive administration were to decide to come down on his efforts in the hotel area and his profit margins were driven to let’s say around 6%, would he continue to build or would you choose a different place to invest your money?
The president needs to be schooled in another area:
Drug prices are determined by what the market will bear.
The same pill sold in the U.S. may sell for a penny in Mexico and even less in poorly developed countries in Africa.
The United States is the most litigious country on the planet, ergo, the price of lawsuits are built into the prices the patient will pay.
In addition, other countries, take Canada as one of many set the prices for what they will pay.
Same with the Veteran’s Administration they tell the companies what they will pay and in addition use within class substitution, example no product has been shown superior to Lipitor in lowering cholesterol.
Please see the entire article and full Wall Street Journal article below.
They aren’t bothered a bit by substituting Crestor a drug that has never been shown in well designed trials to be better than Lipitor.
Perhaps you would like to make tennis shoes, the last I’ve heard on this subject, no one with a critical illness or disease has been helped with their diseases or syndromes by eating them.
Drug Supply Chain Feels the Trump Effect
The Wall Street Journal
By Charley Grant
July 11, 2018
A small gesture on pricing is likely to have a big impact on the prescription drug industry.
On Tuesday evening, Pfizer PFE -0.45% said it would defer planned price increases on about 10% of its prescription medicines after President Donald Trump spoke with CEO Ian Read and criticized the company on Twitter.
Pfizer had planned to raise the list prices of some drugs by as much as 9.4%, part of the annual price increases it and other drug companies impose every year on July 1.
List prices are sticker prices, before rebates and discounts granted to middlemen in the supply chain for drugs.
Pfizer’s move is likely to have a modest direct impact on its profits. Middlemen like drug wholesalers and pharmacy-benefit managers will feel a bigger effect.
The medicines in question make up only a small fraction of Pfizer’s total revenue, which reached nearly $13 billion in the first quarter.
And any impact is likely to be temporary.
Pfizer said the deferred price increases will still take effect by Jan. 1 or earlier if Mr. Trump implements his plan to reform prescription drug prices.
The fact remains that a pharmaceutical giant and highly influential force in Washington is pausing planned price increases after pressure from the president. That’s rare in this industry, for which raising prices has become a major source of earnings growth.
The fallout will extend beyond drug manufacturers, deep into industry supply channels. Manufacturers have already realized the diminishing revenue benefits of price increases in recent years.
For example, Merck raised its list prices by 6.6% in 2017, according to a company report.
After the rebates and discounts it paid to various supply chain companies, net prices actually fell by 1.9%. Rebates and discounts comprised 45% of Merck’s average list price last year; that figure was just 27.3% in 2010.
Reports from other drug companies have shown a similar trend.
The benefits of list price rises have instead flowed more to supply chain companies, such as Express Scripts or McKesson.
But while they tend to make money when drug prices go up, that has also forced them to face more pressure both from politicians in Washington and from new potential competitors like Amazon.com.
Ahead of third-quarter earnings reports, that’s one more piece of news supply chain investors didn’t need to hear.
THE END
JCscuba
Jim Campbell's 
Just watching drug ads on TV scares me to death! They tell us what a MIRACLE CURE the drug is, THEN spend the rest of the ad saying what all deadly things it MIGHT do to you- – -They push all the “NEW AND IMPROVED” blood thinners, but a nurse friend told me plain old Warfarin (rat poison!) has an antidote and the fancy new ones do not. Nearly every drug I have ever had to take has made me SICKER! And I must have a genetic problem with anesthetics of any kind, because 4 of my 5 children have the same problem. So do some of my grandchildren. We are hard to wake up, do not know what planet we are on for several days, then can not really think straight for another 2 weeks. I just DO NOT TRUST MEDICATION OF ANY KIND!
My husband died of lung cancer six years ago. He wanted to live, did all the right things. He changed his diet, ate organic foods and ate no sugar or msg. He changed his attitude, did anything he could. He had all the chemo and radiation he could get. At the end, the chemo put him in to liver failure, which pickled his brain. We had to watch him every minute or he’d get up and fall because he did not remember his legs would no longer hold him up. He had hallucinations.
My daughter who is a prison guard had an old lifer his age who was diagnosed the same time with the same type of cancer. He said “Every day I live is just doing time. If you promise to keep me comfortable, I will save the state a lot of money and just let the cancer have it’s way.” He outlived my husband by 5 months!
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Your nurse friend is completely out of touch with today’s reality. Remember Dr.’s prescribe medicines we don’t and nether does Trump. Trumps efforts are unconstitutional.
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Just what has Ethics ever got to do with the Pharmaceutical industry?
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Having worked for 3 companies over 38 years before buy outs, I’d say a great deal. Bad press equals sagging prescriptions. Are there unethical companies, to be sure, just like there are unethical people who may run them. I’d be core conserved by the FDA approval system. Trump want’s to shorten the time. As it is, drugs are approved in America using our data and thoes of the U.K. etc. Drugs are frequently pulled shortly after release for unintended side effects not picked up in the small trials. Thanks for your comments Jim.
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