But, without such incentives for Big Pharma, who will provide the billions of dollars of
funding for the high-risk research needed to discover such drugs?
Oh, never mind.

Orrin Hatch deleted my question on Facebook:

Dear Senator Hatch: Now that it’s been revealed that 42 bipartisan members of the House inserted PhRMA lobbyist-written language into the Congressional Record on behalf of legislation you co-sponsored in the Senate, will you withdraw your bill and support Senator Brown’s bill, which is better for pediatric and breast cancer survivors?

(or something approx. like it — boy they deleted it quickly!)

The Great Firewall of Utah.

And you didn’t even mention BCCI.

David Vitter didn’t delete me:

Thank you Senator Vitter for standing up to PhRMA when 42 bipartisan members of the House were willing to act like lobbyist fax machines. We appreciate your efforts to make biologic ‘drugs of the future’ available as generics on behalf of those with childhooddiabetes, cancer and AIDS. Please keep fighting and bring this bill to the floor as Senate amendment.

Yes, I really did just write the words “thank you Senator Vitter.” Who is, indisputably, better than Anna Eshoo and Kay Hagan on this issue that is of vital importance to women’s health.

And who could have guessed that! I would really like to know why he’s doing this. Fascinating.
Thanks, Jane, for the tremendous work you do every day.

Praise when merited, even if it is Vitter.

And scorn for those like Hagen. (I’d assume that Hatch is a lost cause from the beginning but nice try)

There was a better Waxman-style alternative in the Senate, offered by Chuck Schumer and Sherrod Brown, which was defeated in the HELP Committee. Brown is now deciding whether to bring it to the floor as an amendment or not.

So there’s no way to pressure Reid et al to replace the Eshoo-like PhRMA-approved language with the Waxman-style alternative offered by Brown and Schumer now, before a merged bill goes to the Senate floor. Wasn’t clear on that. Thank you! Hagan won out in the HELP committee?

Vitter doesn’t look anywhere near 49 in the picture.

Well, maybe there’s some kind of magic youth formula in wearing diapers.

He’s not. He’s still in diapers, ya know.

And we’re not talking about the difference between $10 and $50 here — we’re talking about $50,000 or $300,000 a year, costs that could forever put them out of affordability range even with insurance for most Americans, let alone third world country

Sounds like some pretty exotic drug. Isn’t the average prescription drug about $70?

Yep, that is the current crony capitalism answer.

The free market answer is “the shareholders”. That’s what risk is about. You would think the market fundamentalists would realize that.

I don’t believe for a minute any of these congress folk read their Facebook or Twitter pages. Bodies, bodies… go to their offices bearing signs and pictures of the dead and dying and stop taking out your checkbook for the DNC, OFA and any other political group pretending to help Americans.

Perhaps a bit OT, but I believe the primary argument being used by Pharma to prevent generic forms of biologics is that generic manufacturers cannot GUARANTEE that the generics will be exactly the same as the branded concoction. I have news for those who want to hear it. rDNA genetically-engineered insulin was the FIRST biotech drug to be marketed commercially (the fact that it is regulated as a small molecule drug I’ll leave for another debate). TO DATE, the insulin manufacturers THEMSELVES cannot guarantee (1) exactly what is in the vial of insulin (prions and other downstream garbage); or that the product is uniformly bio-identical from batch to batch. And this has been on the market for more than 20 years.

The biotech industry has now coined a term–bio-equivalence–which means the drug must react in the same manner as the original (branded) molecule, but in no way guarantees that it is exactly bio-identical. In fact, human insulin has been shown in scientific studies to actually be DIFFERENT than human insulin created within the human body. Two other bio-equivalent drugs that have horror stories associated with them (depending on the patient) are Synthroid and Premarin.

$Pharmaceutical$. Friend of mine went to the pharmacy yesterday for a refill of Advair (anti-asthmatic drug). Pharmacist told her: “You know this one medication sustains so many and for those without insurance it costs $270 per 1-month script.” My friend walked back to her car in tears, since her asthma is on the severe side and she knows what suffering from it is all about. I did a google and came up with this lovely insight into how the pharmaceutical company is scrambling to develop something even better to continue reaping the almost $6B they’ve made off Advair thus far since, in May 2010, it goes generic.

Most new drug research is being done by the big universities with money provided by the government, not big Pharma. Pharma spends far more money on advertising their drugs, and even more money on lobbying Congress, then they do on research. Most of their research is being done to make minor changes in drug molecular makeup before their patents expire and others can produce generics.

In the old days Pharma’s efforts at lobbying would have been called bribery, now it is just the way of life in Washington D.C.

Pharma’s gluttonous ways finally coming home to roost. I’ll bet many don’t know that many pharmaceuticals also own their generic ccounterparts and they control distribution. It’s criminal how a big drug maker who makes a generic turns off the machine, slaps a brand name label on and then feels OK about charging many times more the cost of the drug. I guess without that how would they make 20% profits. Ain’t Pharma grand!

Thank you, Jane.
And just to remind people, ‘shareholders’ of corporations (like Phrmas) do not need to be US citizens.
For all that we know, oiligarchs, drug lords, and offshore tax havens are buying up the stock and would reap the profits of these ‘permanent patents’.

Here’s your one word biologic answer:

Herceptin.

____
Also note in link above how Aussies have forced the Pharma that makes it to lower wholesale costs….something we gave up up here in Canada when we went all in with gouger…errrr….increased patent protection awhile back.

.

Thanks, Jane, for blowing the cover off America’s real War on Drugs, as Drugs’ War on America.

Interestingly, a pharmacist acquaintance of mine bragged that Advair and other asthma-related inhalants only cost them a fraction of the amount that they charge patients. “Best profit-maker in the store!” But get this, their best customers have Medicare, so guess who pays the bulk of the Advair bill? Well, it turns out to be the good old taxpayer, but you know the Republicans say that Medicare is going bankrupt. I wonder why? The entire system is corrupt, not only PhRma and the insurance companies, but also the medical and pharmaceutical industries. You really can’t isolate certain sectors like the Obama Admin tried and realistically expect cost containment to magically arise. I say kill the obscene PO travesty, pass the recision and pre-existing condition reforms and stock up for a long winter of attacking the conserva-Dems. I don’t think they can survive another bout from Jane and FDL. I think we could at least get a decent PO if we kept up the fight another year. If we give up now we are going to get a dog that won’t succeed in doing anything, let alone contain any costs.

You said it, and righteously so!

Wow, they are fast! Me too.