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I won't say the Government is entirely to blame, but rules and regulations levied upon the pharmaceutical industry do cost those companies a lot of money...
IMHO, there has to be away. No, I'm not saying they have to lower their prices and not make a profit. But something has to be done to bring prices down.
Why are there such huge differences between Canadian drugs and those sold in the US?
I won't say the Government is entirely to blame, but rules and regulations levied upon the pharmaceutical industry do cost those companies a lot of money...
IMHO, it is the lifestyle that you are accustomed too.
I have a wife and kids and live within our means.
Don't whine for your failure to get a job with a degree.
What I'm saying is that some must do what they have to to get back on their feet.
There are many successful people who have done dirty work.
"Life is unfair."
IMHO, it may be time to say goodbye to the American software programmer. Once the symbols of hope as the nation shifted from manufacturing to service jobs, programmers today are an endangered species.
They face a challenge similar to that which shrank the ranks of steelworkers and autoworkers a quarter century ago: compe ion from foreigners.
Some experts think they'll become extinct within the next few years, forced into unemployment or new careers by a combination of offshoring of their work to India and other low-wage countries and the arrival of skilled immigrants taking their jobs.
No - there doesnt have to be anything done to lower prices. We live in a free-market economy.
Canadian drugs are not as tightly regulated and are also partially paid for by their socialistic government medicine. There is more room for there to be errors in the drug - potientially fatal errors.
How many of the regulations we have are truly necessary?
There's a general principle people need to keep in mind...every 9 added to the reliability adds a 0 to the price tag.
I find our regulations necessary. When drugs come out, we can be confident in taking them beacuse we know they have been tested extensively. We live in a very litigious society, and the regulations we have placed on drugs keeping them under testing for a long time is MUCH cheaper than it would be for us to have patients die, get sick and have long lasting medical bills and drug companies to be under HUGE lawsuits to pay out.
Where do you get the numbers from 9 and 0?
Even if that was true, having reliability from the beginning is cheaper than the costs of unreliable medicine in terms of deaths, sickness and lawsuits. I would rather have confidence in our medicine than know that it is something that could possibly make us sicker. You ultimately pay for what you get.
You ultimately pay for what you get
And that's the bottom line...
On what do you base your assertion that the regulations don't cost as much as litigation?
I agree with testing things extensively. But how much is enough?
It's an old saying I picked up while in the Air Force. It's just another way of stating the "principle of diminishing returns". Simply put, if a system is 90% reliable and costs $1000, making it 99% reliable would cost $10,000...and 99.9% reliable would jack it up to $100,000.
The numbers themselves don't matter...it's the principle. Adding those extra nines to the reliability does not result in a linear increase in cost. And notice that the nines are smaller and smaller increases in reliability...but the cost is increasing exponentially.
If a drug shows 99.99% reliability against non-fatal reactions (not an unreasonable reliability...and may even be small...), but you could increase it to 99.999% reliability...if you increased the cost of that drug by a multiplicative factor (lets say...3 times...)...is that a good trade off? What does that 200% increase in cost buy you? Is that extra 0.009% worth it?
Look at the costs of litigation. 6 Million people took FenPhen. They are each en led to up to 1.5Million dollars. Add to that the huge legal team retained by the defendant.
The cost of bad drugs can't be looked at solely on the cost of more testing and regulation. What are the potiential lives lost cost? What are the costs associated with long-term illness because of potientially harmful effects of the drug?
Without massive regulation, there would be all kinds of companies trying to make the quick buck by putting something on the market, not adequately testing it and being prepared to take the money and run if the drug doesnt work. File a Chapter 11 and move to an island with the money made - damn the effects on the poor people who actually took the medicine.
I thought this was about jobs?
FenPhen wasn't an FDA screw up. It was a screw up on the part of doctors who prescribed two separate approved drugs in a non-approved manner.
What makes a safe drug? A perfect record? 1 death in 500 million? 100 million? 1 million? And how much is a fair price to pay to go from one reliability level to the next?
The problem with the "safe drug" view is that no matter how much regulation you have, you will never ever have 100% reliability in a drug. Period. It's physically impossible.
Sure, people demand it all the time. Doesn't mean it can happen.
It is. You can't separate the various aspects. They're all interrelated.
"A degree helped me land my current job."
Drugs can be safe yet misused. Many times they are perscribed when they shouldnt be or used in a way they shouldnt be used.
I believe that's what I implied, yes. Which has nothing to do with the "massive regulation" you speak about.
It does. The regulation that I speak of is the regulations that are already in place.
We should not drop that so that we can save a couple dollars on viagra.
You could have all the regulations in the world and drug could still be prescribed counter to those regulations.
Regulations won't stop that.
And the question of whether all regulations currently on the books hasn't been answered yet.
Which is medical malpractice and is completely unrelated to the topic at hand.
There is no question there.And the question of whether all regulations currently on the books hasn't been answered yet.
"whether all regulations on the books" is not a question.
If you are in favor of dropping some regulations - what would you drop? My contention is that all these regulations are very much needed.
FenPhen wasnt a bad drug because it was perscribed wrong - it was a bad drug cause it ruined the heart of those who used it. If it was only perscribed wrong, then the doctors would have been sued, not the manufacturer - but in actuality, the manufacturer is the one sued and the one paying out for ruining the hearts of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
Just FYI: PhenFen is a combination of (2) drugs fenfluramine & phentermine, when prescribed alone are completely safe...it's the combination of the two that caused the heart valve damage.
I've always wondered why it was the makers PhenFen that were libel and not the doctors, who should be aware of negative drug interactions. If I'm on birth control & take certain antibiotics which can render the Pill ineffective, do I sue my doctor, the makers of Ortho Tri-clyclin, or the manufacturer of the antibiotic if I got pregnant? There are, I'm sure, too many to count drugs when taken together are potentially deadly....highly regulated or not.
Sorry, for the interruption.....
Incorrect.
Fen-phen refers to the use in combination of fenfluramine and phentermine. Phentermine has also been used in combination with dexfenfluramine ("dexfen-phen"). Fenfluramine ("fen") and phentermine ("phen") are prescription medications that have been approved by the FDA for many years as appe e suppressants for the short-term (a few weeks) management of obesity. Phentermine was approved in 1959 and fenfluramine in 1973. Dexfenfluramine (Redux) was approved in 1996 for use as an appe e suppressant in the management of obesity. Recently, some physicians have prescribed fenfluramine or dexfenfluramine in combination with phentermine, often for extended periods of time, for use in weight loss programs. Use of drugs in ways other than described in the FDA-approved label is called "off-label use." In the case of fen-phen and dexfen-phen, no studies were presented to the FDA to demonstrate either the effectiveness or safety of the drugs taken in combination.
http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/phen/fenphenqa2.htm
I have no idea how people could take that for extended periods of time. I was on that for about a week and didn't sleep the entire time.
That little white tail was messed up.
Fen-Phen was made of those two drugs, but they were marketed and perscribed as a package to combat obesity. The company was at fault, because they put them together for the one perscription of FenPhen.
"Fen-Phen" was not a single drug.
http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/phen/fenphenpr81597.htm
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