Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Whats Changed ** Number 4 Pharmaceuticals **

I was originally going to make Number 4 "Healthcare" but quickly realized it would become to big and unwieldy to read or write about so decided to just pick on 1 healthcare specific for each post, this is the first.

As we become older we rely on more and more drugs to keep us healthy, some of the most common are those that regulate our blood pressure for example ( Atenolol ) and ( Lipitor ) to regulate our cholesterol, the list of others is endless so I will just say these are but the tip of the iceberg. 



Whats Changed


1. Increased use of drugs to prevent heart attacks etc.
2. The American Health care system pays more for Pharmaceuticals than just about any other country in the world
3. Pharmaceutical Companies are granted 10 years plus to recover R and D costs, but somehow manage to gain multiple years extra in the US to milk it for all it's worth.

Below is an example of how the previous standards have fallen apart due to pressure / corruption / lobbying call it what you like


A great example is Lipitor ( Atorvastatin ) which is marketed by Pfizer an American  Pharmaceutical corporation, as a standard Pharmaceutical Companies have up to  12 years of exclusive use to help pay back the huge costs involved in research and development before generics can be developed.


5 years ago Lipitor should have been allowed to be produced as a generic but for some unknown reason only in the United States Pfizer kept control and stopped Generic equivalents being produced, not only that they had the cheek and got away with increasing the cost by more than 30% in the US market during the last 5 years, ( What happened to the department put in place to protect the public from this type of thing ) .


In theory any society that was looking at saving healthcare costs Lipitor ( Atorvastatin ) should have been available in it's generic form on May 30th 2006 but it looks like deals within deals within deals means the public and the US heathcare industry will continue to pay close to the full price for another 6 months till the middle of next year  $350 per month about $35 in copay


In the UK, Canada, Australia Lipitor costs have been less than $100 per month with even larger discounts to National Health Services




So the only country that is stitched with high prices is the same country that payed out the  large tax incentives from the US tax payer they received while the drug was in development.


Lipitor is just one example where America pays more than any other country for the same drugs produced by the same companies because of

You tell me why that is ?

4 comments:

C-ingspots said...

Simple. It's greed.

John Green said...

Great Information, Thanks for Sharing

John and Regina Zdravich said...

$$$$ is the answer. health care in the united states is a business. until it becomes something that is a service to people instead of a business, this sort of thing will continue to happen.

Rockon said...

It is a very nice and informative post.