Can You Trust Pharmaceutical Companies to do the Right Thing With Drug Prices?

Reactions to rising drug prices confirm the centuries-old fallen-ethics of supply and demand is in full effect.

Like sporadic gasoline price gouging, companies raise rates simply because they can, then they realize it's lucrative.

Livelihoods are severely interrupted without the fair availability of gasoline for vehicles.

Likewise, patients cannot live, in many cases, without their medications.


Ironically, the drugs in question do not offer cures. They merely affect the body's chemistry to temporarily mask the illness in timed sequences.

One might better understand the exorbitant pricing of something called 'a prescription cure', but a drug--something that merely offers provisional altering?

To an avid researcher and observer, prescription drug prices are skyrocketing for two reasons:

1. Those with sickness and disease require medication to live
2. Prescription drug addiction is at epidemic proportions

Like any drug dealer worth his ambition, creating the demand is necessary before he can distribute his supply...at his own discretion. He has no rules to follow except his own.

Pharmaceutical drug dealers operate on this premise. There are no laws on the books regarding ethics for drug providers. Who can regulate human compassion?

USA Today reports Jeff Myers, representative of Medicaid managed care plans, notices skyrocketed pricing of insulin in recent years.

To further justify patient fears, a Neurology study found that multiple sclerosis drugs that previously cost around $11,000 annually now retail for about $60,000 a year.

Drug prices continue to rise despite increased use of generics. In 2009, for example, Americans spent $411.3 billion on prescription drugs, up 9.3% over 2008. The average cost per prescription was $103.75, up 6.5%. In 2010, costs rose another 8%, according to the annual Milliman Medical Index.

Unit price increase continues despite the increased use of generic drugs, which are generally cheaper than their brand name equivalents.

That said, drug companies typically spend around 50% on manufacturing, with a profit margin of about 20%.

A company spends $500 million on a drug selling $1 billion a year, reaping $200 million in profits, with the rest going for sales, general and administrative expenses (sales commissions, bonuses, etc).

Pharmaceutical companies that develop and manufacture traditional drugs are buying smaller biotech firms or developing additional units devoted to biotech fields.

This caused the development of drug therapies to treat wide-spread diseases to lag. Drug companies are instead focused on developing what's called "Me Too" drugs that add no benefit to the current regimen.

Pharmaceutical companies shifted most of their focus and R&D dollars into making specialty drugs that treat diseases like cancer. Four cancer drugs were introduced in 2011:

1. Pfizer's Xalkori - $115,220
2. Bristol Meyer's Squibb's Yervoy - $120,000
3. Roche/Genetech's Zelboraf - $112,800
4. Seattle Genetics' Adcetris - $94,000 to $216,000

Three of these four companies are traditional, branching out into the biopharmaceutical genre. Consequently, we continue to see dramatic increases in brand-name drugs, which has a disproportionate effect since brand drugs are typically more expensive than generics by a great measure.

Public outcry is such that the Democratic candidates added the problem of soaring prices to their list of talking points in their sprint toward the presidency.

• Bernie Sanders promises to "introduce legislation to stop increases in pharmaceutical prices,"
• In September, Hillary Clinton pounced on Turing Pharmaceuticals for over-inflating Daraprim, a drug that treats HIV/AIDS infections, demanding it go back to its original price. The new owner raised the pill price from $13.50 to $750.

If the candidates' addressing the rising cost of pharmaceuticals is political grandstanding, turns out it's a relevant ploy.

This pill-mill dominance is a literal life and death situation for many patients who depend on the very drugs that are made impossible to obtain.

On the subject of prescription drug addiction, well...with millions of prescription drug addicts, there are billions to be made from illegal sales.

In summary, pharmaceutical companies monopolize drug sales to the point of freezing out sick patients while driving others with resources into poverty.

Meanwhile, addicts take to the streets to fatten the pockets of illegal dealers.

An ideal situation for a few...

Additional source: Health Institute of Tennessee
Article was written by Peggy Hatchet James
Copyright © 2015