This isn’t over yet. If you look at the share price, KV Pharmaceuticals took a big hit, but Wall Street clearly believes that Makena will dominate the market for this drug at a lower price. The usual strategy is to play on patients’ and physicians’ fears of a compounded drug. This may be a harder sell than usual because KV has been plagued with its own manufacturing problems. The orphan drug law needs to be updated. Not just because of Makena but for all the new biologics coming available.

I personally believe all major development patent exclusive right should be for a set level of profit or a set time line.

The point is to encourage innovation not be a lottery or racket.

The government-created monopoly is coming to be the American economic model, and one of the reasons why the distribution of income has become so badly skewed in favor of the CEO’s.

Out of curiosity, when was the monopoly to the St Louis firm granted? I would guess it was under the Bush administration.

So while we were looking at this particular FDA outrage shiny object, what more egregious FDA disaster did it distract us from.

Egg zachery!

The point is ABSOLUTELY to create a racket. Why do you think big pharma spends so much money on bribes lobbying?

Until it is widely understood that the large-scale profit motive creates an irreconcilable conflict of interest when it comes to health-care, stories like this will be the rare exception.

And since there’s a movement underway to have the IRS investigate any miscarriage….what a $$$$ maker!
The Christain Wrong Is really moving this country and world backwards fast.
Take a look at this one:
Indiana Republican’s Disgusting Smear of Rape Victims and Women
& this:
Indiana Charges Suicidal Pregnant Woman With “Feticide” and Homicide

No checks for Japaneses radiation in food now showing up on the West Coast

They are saying that trace amounts of radiation is in milk on the west coast.

Past tense. See this analysis of the “wealth transfer” that took place in 2008 and over the last few years since.

KV Pharmaceuticals plans to offer financial assistance to low-come households in need of the drug

This by the way (from the link in the post) is called price discrimination. It allows the supplier to capture more of the area under the demand curve, thus boosting profits even more. You’ve prolly noticed this in PhRMA ads on TV. That’s what it’s all about.

That’s what college scholarships are all about. Their only deviation from perfect price discrimination would be to raise tuition to $1 billion/ year. That way almost everyone would have to apply for a “scholarship” and with the income statement of every applicant, colleges could determine exactly how much it could charge every student.

Shssssh……….

I found this Noah Chomshy quote at hacker news. It nails this situation perfectly….

Chomsky:

…The World Trade Organization, the Uruguay round that set up the World Trade Organization imposed, it’s called a “free trade agreement”. It’s in fact a highly protectionist agreement. The US is strongly opposed to free trade, just as business leaders are, just as they’re opposed to a market economy. A crucial part of the Uruguay round, WTO, NAFTA, and the rest of them, is very strong (what are called) intellectual property rights. What it actually means is rights that guarantee monopoly pricing power to private tyrannies.

So take, say, a drug corporation. Most of the serious research and
development, the hard part of it, is funded by the public. In fact most of the economy comes out of public expenditures through the state system, which is the source of most innovation and development. I mean computers, the internet. Just go through the range, it’s all coming out of the state system primarily. There is research and development in the corporate system, some, but it’s mostly at the marketing end. And the same is true of drugs.

Once the corporations gain the benefit of the public paying the costs and taking the risks, they want to monopolize the profit. And the intellectual property rights, they’re not for small inventors. In fact the people doing the work in the corporations, they don’t get anything out of it, like a dollar if they invent something. It’s the corporate tyrannies that are making the profits, and they want to guarantee them….”

Published 1 hour 20 minutes ago: “Low levels of radiation found in milk on U.S. West Coast” (AP feed, Toronto Star, Mar. 31, 2011)

“Samples from Wash. and Calif. show radioactive Iodine-131″ … “Low levels of radiation found in U.S. milk” (msnbc.com, Mar. 31, 2011, 2:04:33 PM ET)

DING!

The real question is what deal was struck between someone at the FDA and KV Pharmaceutical?

Some quid pro quo must have been involved for the FDA to give KV monopoly control over this drug, allowing KV to jack the price through the stratosphere, probably a “revolving door” arrangement in which someone at the FDA expected to be richly rewarded after leaving government “service” for the private sector (they may have even been offered a job at KV?).

Call me cynical, but this was so blatant that there must have been a deal involved. Was it between a hold-over Bush appointee at the FDA and KV? Maybe an Obama appointee? A group of them, making this decision in the dark of night, hoping no one would notice?

There is a common system used by most governments, when a monopoly (patent) is given to make and sell a drug

to prevent this kind of thing.

in every country in the Western world, in exchange for the patent, the manufacturer negotiates the price it can charge, with the government.

the prices for various prescription drugs, for various countries, are easily available on the internet.

I think Italy is the lowest. Canada is lower middle.

Of the western world countries, Only the USA does not use this system.

I would like to have been in on the meeting, when this action to increase the price to fifteen hundred dollars a pill was taken.

cancel the order for the new luxury yacht.