on 11/13/03 3:56 PM, Garth Wood at garth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> And yes, Canadian drugs don't meet American "standards" (whatever the Hell
> those are). Even as we speak, Canadians by the hundreds of thousands are
> dropping like flies because the drugs the big American drugcos sell us are
> "substandard" and "Third-World-quality"; even though the same drugs in U.S.
> pharmacies are "world-class" and "high quality." Why, the Gabapentin I've
> been prescribed, made by Pfizer in the U.S., is probably just sugar. (It just
> might be -- after my drug insurance plan kicked in, a month's supply cost me a
> princely $6.19 CDN, including the GST; the same prescription in the U.S. would
> run somewhere around $120.00 U.S. without a drug insurance plan -- Pfizer made
> a profit of $1.2 Billion U.S. on the drug just in 2001.)
>
> Whoo-hoo! NOW I'm fLyIn'!!!
>
>
> Garth
I think a lot of it is that Canada has a 'federalized' health care system,
so the government is actively interested in the containing and reducing
prices of the drugs consumed... In the US, there are 'many payers', and most
are insurance companies so most actual drug consumers have only a 'co-pay'
on the prescription... as long as that's minimal and affordable these lucky
insured consumers have next to no incentive or concern about the *true* cost
of the prescription drugs. This is changing as co-pays go up, and as the
number of un-insured or under-insured consumers, e.g. elderly Medicare
users, unemployed, marginally employed, etc. increases.
It will be very interesting to see if, when the politicians eventually
settle on a "Medicare prescription drug benefit plan", the drug companies
are able to head off any kind of controls or limits on their pricing or
profits for the covered drugs... If not, then all we taxpayers will be
paying for the profits of the drug companies.
While the pharmaceutical industries arguement is that they can't/won't be
able to develop -new- drugs without reaping the huge profits from those
eventually approved drugs, and that many many expensive failures occur for
each successful drug developed, so they need the astronomical margins. The
plain fact is that their spending for advertising/promotion, and their
profits, are both much higher than many other industries...
I think the government will have to step in here somewhere, or it will be a
multi-multi-billion dollar taxpayer giveaway plan to the benefit of the
pharmaceutical industry... the best plan millions of lobbyist dollars and
campaign contributions can buy. I'm sure glad we don't have any of those
already... :-p
But I'm not cynical about it, I just wish I could afford to buy Merck or
Pfizer, etc. stock...
--
Jim Brokaw
OM-'s of all sorts, and no OM-oney...
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