So I’m watching the House live feed on the web while working on my secret project. HB523 came to the floor. It would require pharmacists to dispense the specific brand name of a immuno-suppressant drug and not a generic. Currently pharmacists can dispense a generic drug unless the proscribing doctor writes “Brand Only”.
Every single pharmacist in the House rose to speak against the bill. It was unnecessary for the health of the patient. If the doctor wanted a specific drug “Brand Only” would suffice. That is current law.
The problem is that many of these immuno-suppressant drugs are coming off patents and soon generics will be available. This bill would require insurance companies and patients to pay for the more expensive brand name drugs.
The House voted it down, 64-103. Good for them.
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Good. Unfortunately, it only solves part of the problem…….it’s up to the FDA to solve the other part.
Pharm companies love to introduce their new “improved” (or so they claim) version of their flagship drugs just in time to replace the patent-espiring original. Often, the “new” version has just enough ‘tweaking’ of its chemical makeup (or delivery mechanism, etc…) to meet the criteria of a new patent….regardless of whether the actual pharmacology/efficacy of the new version has changed one bit. Push out the samples/lit, get “practioners of the healing arts” to buy-in to the new drug and writing scripts replacing the “old” one. Voila.
I haven’t read the bill, but your description of it makes it sound like a ludicrous idea to begin with. I’m amazed anyone voted for it at all.
If patients only understood that every drug company keeps a running total of their products and amount written by each individual doctor to properly motivate the doctors to assist their stockholders and evaluate their female field promotion employees.
“it would be best to ban the practice, noting that the medical industry spends $20 billion a year in payments and gifts to doctors.”
“Doctors who have financial ties to a drug company are more likely to prescribe that company’s drugs, critics say. And that can mean more use of costly brand-name drugs and less use of cheaper generic drugs.”
“Medical schools have good reason not to prohibit such activities, she said. It allows them to pay their star faculty less because they can make substantial money working on the side for a drug or medical device company, she said.
“We have enormous costs for medical care in America,” said Steve Nissen, a cardiologist with the Cleveland Clinic. “It has raised our health care costs beyond our ability to sustain them.”
“So I’m watching the House live feed on the web while working on my secret project.”
Cold fusion in your crawlspace?
freezing mice and then shocking them back to life with a stun gun?
Putting barbeque sauce on a chili dog?
I too watched the debate for HB 523. (Unfortunately I think I missed anything on HB 614) I contacted several of the Reps that spoke out against the bill and gave them props. None the less, being a direct recipient of said “goodies” from drug companies I can tell you that I nor any of the doctors at my practice are swayed to use their product. As a matter of fact, we use their “samples” for those patients who are in need and may not have access to medication otherwise. With that… let them think they are persuading us and I will keep drinking their StarBucks. Government has NO place in PRIVATE healthcare!
Interesting that Sharon Cooper is the second signer too. With her husband being a Dr. and all it doesn’t take too much of an imagination to figure out why she signed on. For the life of me though I cannot figure out why Lunsford and Jerguson jumped on this piss poor wagon…
Glad to see it tanked, healthcare is expensive enough as it is.
Not sure about the details of this bill and I use generic drugs whenever I can, but it’s real easy to bash drug companies.
A lot of drugs in the R&D pipeline never make it to market. There is a big risk to developing drugs, so it must be coupled with a big reward to offset the losers. At some point the reward won’t be high enough to justify the risk. A few years from now we’ll all be scratching our heads wondering why no life saving drugs are being invented in the US. Since France and Canada aren’t exactly R&D hotbeds, the world will be short on innovation.
I’m speaking more to the Federal bashing of drug companies than any state laws under consideration.
Mr. Eaton,
A lot of that risk is due to government over regulation and some protectionist policies that Big Pharma lobbied to put in place to keep others out of the pharmaceutical business.
I know you are on a regulatory commission, and I had high hopes for you. Please do me a favor (seriously), when not actively working… try to remove yourself as much as possible from your job… it might help you see things from another, non-regulatory, position. Imagine if the original polio vaccine or penicillin had to go through the rigors that are required today. I’m not sure if either would have ever reached the market.
ChuckEaton: that’s all well and good, but it’s no reason to try to get state government to dictate the relationship between a doctor, patient, and/or pharmacist. There are plenty of other legislative avenues to pursue, such as patent reform, FDA approval policies, etc.
heroV – I used the opportunity to get on a soapbox about too much Federal regulation, wasn’t commenting on the state – a mistake on my part.
Daniel- Because I sit on a regulatory body does not mean I believe in more regulation. I know that’s hard to explain to somebody who doesn’t believe in any regulation of utilities. I believe the pharmaceutical industry is far too regulated.
While there may have been times the drug companies clandestinely lobbyied for more regulation to eliminate competition, I suspect the issue is more complicated than your one sentence definition. Somehow I doubt the industry likes the incredibly long approval process at the FDA.
It’s easy to be black and white about regulation, but it’s not so simple. Take the idea of a patent, basically an intellectual property right – turning an idea into property. The only way to be completely pure is on both extremes, either you don’t think an idea is property and anyone should be able to copy it, or you do think it’s property that should be passed on for generations like land. Anything in-between the extremes, the expiration time frame of the patent, is a regulation discussion.
And Daniel, I agree that we may not have had the polio vaccine or penicillin if we had our current FDA back then, but I think you should add aspirin to the list as well. When you look at the number of deaths caused by aspirin each year, it probably never would have been approved.
I understand that the bill is up Thursday on a move to reconsider… Guess the drug company doesnt wanna see their bill die
The FDA is so grossly corrupt that it is completely untrustworthy in terms of the “approval” process for these drugs, GMO’s, etc.
The inflated prices on drugs is disgusting, and the way big pharma profits off of state mandated vaccines, and Medicaid and Medicare, is deplorable. One of the families I work with has a 4 year old son with a dry skin problem on his scalp which got infected. The child probably just needed some tea tree oil. Being on Medicaid, he was prescribed a $2,000 antibiotic. Absolutely crazy.
Aspartame is a good example of what should have never been allowed onto the public market. Thank you Donald Rumsfeld for being hired by Searle to go to Washington and pull all the necessary strings for approval after the FDA denied approval to Searle for aspartame the first go round.
Shame on the House for even allowing this kind of bill to the House floor for the vote.
I know that’s hard to explain to somebody who doesn’t believe in any regulation of utilities.
Just to be clear… that statement is not true. I am not an anarchist.
ex. I believe some regulation, like government in general, is a necessary evil, like driving on the right side of the road. Some order/standard is needed. But we should try to get by with the least amount of it as possible. Freedom First, regulate only if absolutely necessary.
“The FDA is so grossly corrupt that it is completely untrustworthy in terms of the “approval” process for these drugs, GMO’s, etc.”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Funny things is, Lunsford, Randall, Cooper, Harbin, Jerguson and Burkhalter stood to create large benefits for their contributors with this bill…had it passed.
All of them cosponsored the bill and all of them receive unusually high dollar contributions from and unusually high number of pharms and healthcare related companies. More than your average majority party member.
Oh yeah, regarding drug prices…let us not forget the extraordinary sums of money that are spent advertising these drugs in the first place.
I did a little studying over the past couple years over these costs. Over the course of a drug’s R&D prior to FDA approval, the costs can come to $1.7billion at the high end of the price tag. Most projects are abandoned after between the 5th and 10th year of R&D…and another large number of pharmecutical ideas are scrapped prior to investment. Most of these companies pay little in taxes, so the whole corporate tax b/s from the right wing does not apply here.
Advertising prescription drugs has in fact lead to an increasing rate of prescription of those drugs. Surveys of the top 60 prescribed medications have seen an average increase of 20% once the advertising campaign began.
Is there a caveat? Indeed, there is. R&D does not make the costs of drugs as high as anti-regulation fanatics claim. Those costs have been figured into the budgeting equations for decades. Shareholders are a bigger problem. Advertising costs for the life a drug often exceed the R&D costs…and on top of that, add the lawsuits from people who demanded the drug from the doctor and had adverse and extreme side effects.
Thats correct. The lawsuits. In the most politically conservative era of torts claims, we have seen an increase in law suits filed against pharmecutical companies that corresponds with the increased spending of pharm. advertising.
In the end, the shareholders end up have had a fairly stable income from pharm. companies…and you, the consumer, foot the bill for everything. I pay $30 a month for Enbrel. Enbrel costs about $1500/month. Insurance covers the rest…making my policy that I pay $700/month cost the company a total of $9240 per year…just for one prescription. While, chances are, you may pay more for insurance than the value of your typical annual benefits…you are paying for the out of pocket costs the insurance company foots for my bill.
Healthcare reform is essential! Insurance reform is essential. Prescription drug costs are something that need to be dealt with. Otherwise, costs are going to keep rising and your ability to afford insurance (or your employer ability) will decline.
“The FDA is so grossly corrupt that it is completely untrustworthy in terms of the “approval” process for these drugs, GMO’s, etc.”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Actually there’s no requirement. The statement has been made. This isn’t a criminal proceeding. (innocent until proven guilty) In fact as taxpayers and Americans, we reserve the right to launch “wreckless accusations” at any government agency at any time. As far as proof, I think one would have to be rather naive or ill informed to not realize the corrupt nature of the FDA.
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