EPTYou actually do become immune to each unique strain of cold after you recover from it (this is one reason why kids get colds far more than adults), but there's always a new strain waiting to come home with your kid at the beginning of each school year.
Drug Cost A Likely Death Sentence - Page 3
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Igakusei
United States610 Posts
You actually do become immune to each unique strain of cold after you recover from it (this is one reason why kids get colds far more than adults), but there's always a new strain waiting to come home with your kid at the beginning of each school year. | ||
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Sanguinarius
United States3427 Posts
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LeoTheLion
China958 Posts
There are also rare diseases for which there is no cure, such as certain metabolic disorders or faulty DNA repair mechanisms. What's better? Having a disease that can benefit from $500,000 / year of treatment costs, or having a disease that has no treatment? | ||
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Medrea
10003 Posts
On June 22 2011 12:19 LeoTheLion wrote: I interviewed at the company who developed Soliris. Unfortunately, there are pharmaceutical companies out there whose strategy is to target these rare diseases to invest resources for R&D. The plus side is that they find therapeutic drugs for these diseases. The minus side is that R&D is not cheap, and since the disease is so rare, the burden falls on the few people with the disease to pay it off. There are also rare diseases for which there is no cure, such as certain metabolic disorders or faulty DNA repair mechanisms. What's better? Having a disease that can benefit from $500,000 / year of treatment costs, or having a disease that has no treatment? Yeah I could argue that a non practical cure is pretty much no cure at all. | ||
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tokicheese
Canada739 Posts
Ideally we could just pay for everyone to be healthy no matter the cost but at a certain point the needs of the many out weigh the few. | ||
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On June 22 2011 11:48 Fruscainte wrote: All of it? Don't fool yourself. Especially since this is considered a "pre-existing condition", they would at the most pay for maybe half of it. No insurance company (AKA a business) would spit out 500k a year for some guy spending less than a fraction of that in his payments. Even here in America with perfect insurance he would be paying a shit ton out of pocket. That sucks though OP. Of course they won't cover pre existing conditions. The whole point of insurance is to buy it before he gets sick. | ||
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Lowkin
Canada232 Posts
On June 22 2011 12:14 Arnstein wrote: Move to Norway. You actually aren't allowed to pay more than 300 dollars each year for any kind of treatment, after the first 300 dollars it's free. These are the options he's looking at right now, although it takes a while before he can get citizenship and I don't know if you know this but a lot of the time people get denied citizenship because they may cost to much money to taxpayers, I know in Canada they do this. I think my friend is fortunate in the fact that he can apply for dual citizenship with the U.K. But I don't know how long of a process that will be before he receives treatment. | ||
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Sobba
Sweden576 Posts
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On June 22 2011 11:46 Medrea wrote: Yeah but those guys make way too much money. I understand it takes excellent minds to develop this stuff but commanding 7 figure salaries for executive types, not even the researchers, and asking for more is a tad ridiculous. If they didn't make good money for their efforts, they wouldn't have nearly as much an incentive to develop new drugs and conduct research, and the drugs we have today that are able to cure diseases wouldn't exist at all, and there would be no hope. Yeah, it sucks, but there's nothing you can do about it, and pharmaceutical companies getting rich is the lesser of two evils. Only hope is that the government will pay for it, very unfortunate that he has to suffer from this illness. | ||
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BestFriends
Canada133 Posts
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Phobic
United States50 Posts
Theres honestly too much to debate here. It's might(whoever can make the money) is right(will live) vrs all(every person that is situationally destitute in some aspect) should prosper(live). Personally I go with the second option but there is argument for the first. Things are different when your actually in the situation though. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On June 22 2011 13:03 MaGiKL wrote: the money is due to the research cost. Supply and demand doesn't have much to do with it. That's not quite true, if demand was high, they could lower price dramatically and still earn a profit. If expected sales are tiny, they have to charge a very large amount of money for it to earn a net profit. | ||
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FFGenerations
7088 Posts
this shit is so random, one day you will wake up and suddenly be diagnosed with a terminal illness and have 1 or 2 or 5 years to live. pretty sad shit and best not to think about it :/ | ||
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Harpwn
Australia253 Posts
The drug companies can't jsut hand out cheap drugs, theyre a business, and look at it this way. If they did hand out a drug for a rare disease and ran a huge ass loss on it, then more than likely they wont be able to develop new cures and even more people will be harmed. This happens all the time. Even when it comes to health promotion. Say X amount of money on anti smoking adds saves 100 lives, and X amount for money for adds to promote washing your hands regularly saves 50, its only common sense that if you have to pick one, you pick the one that saves the most people. Its better for the gov. to spend 500k/year on other people than this guy. sad but true. its how the world works. And while its not nice that this guy is missing out on his drugs, it wouldnt be nice if they did fund his drugs and many more people lost out on their drugs. | ||
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GabrielB
Brazil594 Posts
So, guys, go donate some blood and, while you are there, tell them you would like to register yourself as a possible bone marrow donor. The chances of you being called are pretty small, but you might save a life if you do. | ||
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LeoTheLion
China958 Posts
On June 22 2011 13:35 GabrielB wrote: Well, bone marrow transplant is an option, I believe. It's pretty hard to find a matching donor, but not impossible. So, guys, go donate some blood and, while you are there, tell them you would like to register yourself as a possible bone marrow donor. The chances of you being called are pretty small, but you might save a life if you do. Bone marrow transplant has its downsides as well. He'll have to be on immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of his life (which aren't cheap either), and have their own set of problems. | ||
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
The fact is unless governments devote their entire budgets to healthcare they are going to have to ration. The reason the Candian system is considered one of the best in the world is that the process for getting governent listing is incredibly rigorous. Drug companies have to prove cost-effectivess for their treatment before it gets considered. What this means is that if the proven effectiveness does not outweigh the cost of the medication it will not be funded. This can be due to the price being charged, the number of patients, the mode of treatment, the supportive care required or any number of other factors. Unfortunately for your friend Alexion is a relatively "small" pharma companies. Most have some sort of compassionate use program in countries that have universal care. I assume this is not the case for Alexion. As for the debate about pricing of drugs, companies gain nothing but overpricing their medication. You can't support R&D if you have no drugs to market. The reason rare diseases are targeted is because their mechanism of action can be determined and a truly effective medication can be produced. This significantly shifts the cost/benefit in favour of reimbursement. The small number of patients is a good thing, in that the expected demand for the treatment will be low. Rare disease treatments also have the benefit of using specific tools to treat the condition. These tools can be used in other indications as well. In some cases a targeted drug can be used in other setting because of what it targets. Thus the investment in the original R&D pays off multiple times. I'm not sure about Canada but it Aus there a provision for Orphan status drugs which are medications that treat less than 2000 patients per year. The get priority review and reviewed more leniently due the relatively large benefit that can be gained. If this is the case for this medication than it seems that there is a pricing issue. Unfortunately we can't have everything and luckily Canada has one of the better systems for pricing medications. Nothing is simple when it comes to health economics. Edit: On June 22 2011 12:03 Wombatsavior wrote: This reminds me of Dr. Burzynksi incident thats been on going for a good 20-30 years now or so. It's about the FDA's war against his different cure for cancer that does work. They try to throw him in prison while at the sametime approving him for clinical trials, but now there's a long full length documentary showing his side of the story. They were showing the full length up to June 20th. + Show Spoiler + + Show Spoiler + http://www.burzynskimovie.com/ <-- If it has you interested This is proven BS. The guy was found guilty of fraud and his supposed wonderous trials have been in recruitment since the early 90's. The FDA has incredibly strong standards for proving a medication works and if it doesn't stack up too bad. This guy basically experimented on patients for 30 years. This has also been discussed previously but got closed. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=233309 | ||
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Toast_
United States56 Posts
So to recoup the ~billion dollars they put into the drug, yes, they have to charge a huge amount of money.... But it doenst stop there, because even if they break even (which wont happen if its a rare disease and the drug is not commonly used), then one unknown side effect is found out, that they werent able to find with 15 years of research, but juries say, oh, they are big pharma and evil, and award huge settlements against the company. So now, they have to pay lawyers, and pay settlements for the drug that they have yet to make a profit off of.... Now, I dont know a better system, so I am not one to throw stones, we have a crappy system from both sides, and I am not smart enough to figure out how to make it worth for both, however I dont think pharma is using drugs like this to turn a profit If they were only in it for the money they would only be making drugs for weight loss and cosmetics, because that is where the money is...... in the drugs that can be marketed to EVERYONE, not to a very rare disease that 99.9999% of the population will have no indication to ever use. So yeah, it sucks, and it sucks worse when it really hits home and you find out someone hurt by the system, but if anyone has a good solution I would love to hear it. Because the money has to come from somewhere, you cant just say charge less.... it has to be able to pay for the research. So either you have expensive drugs.... or the government pays, and all the taxes go up until you cant make a living wage, and the same people hurt by drug prices are now hurt by milk prices that they cant afford. Aint life a bitch? | ||
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acker
United States2958 Posts
Sorry about your friend, but I don't think he's going to make it  It'll take a miracle for the price to drop fast enough. | ||
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MozzarellaL
United States822 Posts
On June 22 2011 11:40 Ichabod wrote: It takes ~$1 billion for a company to bring a drug to market, years of R&D, studies, and meeting FDA regulations. When a drug is produced to treat a rare disease/condition, costs like these are unfortunate but expected. Edit: (I assume costs to bring a drug to market is similar in Canada, but I'm less familiar with the specifics) In the USA, the Gov't gives huge tax breaks and other incentives to companies who develop cures to diseases that affect a very small portion of the population. Entire companies devout their resources to finding these types of cures (e.g., Genzyme). On top of this I think the USA also set up some sort of subsidy program to help victims pay for their medical costs in these situations. Who knows what Canada does in this regard... | ||
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