Tag: PhARMA

Remember That Drug, Remdesivir?

No?

It is the newest miracle drug to fight the Covid-19 virus….

Still nothing?

Here is my initial post on the drug……https://lobotero.com/2020/05/05/remdesivir/

There is more to the story than some “miracle” drug…..(the miracle is just how average Americans will pay for the treatment)

Looks like eventually when we have the tests…they will be free to every American….which is great….but what if you test positive and they treat you with Remdesivir…..but at what price?

Now that the FDA has approved the drug remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19, a big question looms: How much will it cost? The drug’s manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, is donating its current stock, enough to treat about 140,000 patients, reports Barron’s, but its pricing decision after that will be under scrutiny. Much will depend on data still to come in on the drug’s effectiveness, but this “will set the bar for how all coronavirus treatments that come after remdesivir will be priced,” writes Bob Herman at Axios.

  • $4,500: A report issued Friday by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a research group that offers guidance on pricing, said Gilead could charge about $4,500 per treatment course if further testing proves that it saves lives. It figures a treatment course of 10 days.
  • $390: The group says the price could be $390 per course if the drug has a lesser effect: that is, it doesn’t save lives, but it speeds up recovery by a few days, per Axios.
  • $10: The report also provides a low range of $10, which it says would allow Gilead to recover the cost of making the drug but forgo any profits. How Reuters frames the issue in a headline: “Will Gilead price its coronavirus drug for public good or company profit?” The advocacy group Public Citizen is all for this $1-per-day model, arguing that “Gilead initially developed remdesivir as one of several candidate treatments for hepatitis C and has made tens of billions off its successful hepatitis C drugs.”
  • Big money: If Gilead goes with the upper range of $4,500, that could generate $2 billion in revenue for the company, reports Bloomberg. If the drug does indeed save lives, this price is “really reasonable,” in the view of one analyst.
  • Old controversy: Gilead ran into much controversy in 2013 when it priced a new drug for hepatitis C, Sovaldi, at $1,000 per pill, notes Reuters. That led to a huge backlash against Big Pharma in general. “This is a tremendous opportunity for drug manufacturers” to help the industry’s image, says a pricing expert at firm ZS Associates. “There has been an overwhelmingly negative focus on drug prices.”
  • Lawmakers’ letter: After the FDA move, Democratic Reps. Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut wrote a letter to Health and Human Services chief Alex Azar to demand an “appropriate accounting” of how much taxpayer help Gilead received in developing the drug in the form of grants and such, reports the San Francisco Business Times. The outlet sees this as “one of the first salvoes” in the Gilead pricing debate. An “unaffordable drug is completely ineffective,” the lawmakers wrote.

Did you read that?  One analyst thinks $4500 is reasonable…..I’ll bet he thinks that 500 dollars for insulin is reasonable as well.

You can bet that Pharma will milk every cent out of this windfall…..for profit health care is the American Dream…..and our dynamite health care system will let the rape of the consumer continue.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

I Agree With Trump!

I know some of my more conservative readers will be reading this and having to sit down…..the old professor likes something Trump is doing?

Well yes I do….but there a several things that I approve of from the Trump admin……like bring troops home and a better infrastructure……so far neither of those have come to the forefront….only in rhetoric not reality.

As an old retired fart that depends on Medicare for his drugs and care I am always bitching about the price of my drugs….especially my insulin and pain meds…..

It appears that our president is going to do something about the high costs of prescribed medicine…..

The Trump administration said Wednesday it will set up a system to allow Americans to legally import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada, weakening a long-standing ban that had stood as a top priority for the politically powerful pharmaceutical industry. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar made the announcement Wednesday morning, the AP reports. Previous administrations had sided with the industry on importation, echoing its concerns that it could expose patients to risks from counterfeit or substandard medications. Azar, a former drug industry executive, said US patients will be able to import medications safely and effectively, with oversight from the Food and Drug Administration. The administration’s proposal would allow states, wholesalers, and pharmacists to get FDA approval to import certain medications that are also available here.

It’s unclear how soon consumers will see results. Most patients take affordable generic drugs to manage conditions such as high blood pressure or elevated blood sugars. But polls show concern about the prices of breakthrough medications for intractable illnesses like cancer or hepatitis C infection, whose costs can run to $100,000 or more. And long-available drugs like insulin have also seen price increases that have forced some people with diabetes to ration their own doses. “For too long American patients have been paying exorbitantly high prices for prescription drugs that are made available to other countries at lower prices,” Azar said in a statement that credited President Trump for pushing the idea. The administration’s move comes as the industry is facing a crescendo of consumer complaints over prices, as well as legislation from both parties in Congress to rein in costs.

This is a great idea but like all great from Trump is it a lie,  a broken promise or will it make it to the reality of my life?

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Those Damn Drug Prices!

While I prepared for the Storm Barry to show up I checked my supplies and my meds to be sure I had enough to last 2 weeks in case the storm was more dangerous than predicted….and this had me thinking…..

I admit that the older I get the more drugs I seem to need to keep going….and those prices are so damn high that all us old farts are bitching about the prices.

There are many theories as to why this situation exists…..mine is that Congress just protects its handlers profits……but could there be another possible answer?

How about the US Trade policies?

Skyrocketing drug prices were a major issue in the 2016 US presidential campaign, and the Trump administration has since announced measures to bring them down. Why, then, is the administration also pushing for intellectual-property rules that give pharmaceutical giants even more price-gouging power?

Sharp price increases for essential and life-saving medicines have generated a political backlash against the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. In February, the US Senate Committee on Finance scolded industry representatives for pursuing policies that are “morally repugnant.” Since then, 44 US state governments have filed a lawsuit against Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 other companies, alleging conspiracy to stifle competition for generic drugs and illegal profiteering from over 100 different medicines.

For its part, US President Donald Trump’s administration has also announced that it will pursue measures to reduce the prices of drugs, especially those needed to treat America’s opioid epidemic. Yet the administration is also trying to export intellectual-property rules that are known to be associated with massive price increases abroad, making basic medicines unaffordable to millions of poor people in developing countries.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/10/blame-us-trade-policy-sky-high-drug-prices

As much as I would love to be able to blame it all on Trump I just cannot….every president is just as guilty….it has NEVER been about the health of the people rather the profit of the corporations.

Pharma and insurance companies are panicking with the popularity of Medicare For All…I have even had a few come to IST and try to wish away the Medicare For All program…..but they will succeed because they have the cash to buy the Congress to get their way and the rest of us can just die if we do not like their plans.

Sorry about that a rant first thing on a Sunday.

Looks like we were fortunate and all we got here was rain and a bunch of wind…..one down and waiting for the next……0330 hrs and 93 degrees….getting back to normal…..

That Big Drug Deal

Just what we have been waiting on for a year or more….that big drug deal……this will be our biggest deal yet for affordable medication, right?

Bullah*t!

Trump and Sec of the mundane announced their new “blueprint” for lower drug prices……

Drug policy experts and price advocates on Friday panned a long-overdue speech by Donald Trump on drug prices.

As part of the speech, the US health secretary, Alex Azar, suggested drug companies should be required to disclose pharmaceutical prices in advertisements as an incentive to set lower prices.

Along with the speech, the president released a “blueprint” to lower drug prices. However, many proposals had already been made public in the administration’s budget and most were technical rule changes which can be accomplished without Congress. Drug policy analysts said most the proposals would be unlikely to “materially harm industry”. Following Trump’s speech, health stocks rose.

The administration’s blueprint also proposed lifting the pharmacist “gag” rule, so pharmacists can tell consumers when a drug is cheaper without their health insurance. Such provisions are written into contracts between pharmacists and benefit managers, who act as middlemen between the consumer and the health plan.

(theguardian.com)

Did you read that stocks soared because of this announcement?  If this did not benefit the drug industry massively would their prices have soared?  I think not!

President Trump’s long-awaited plan to bring down drug prices will mostly spare the pharmaceutical industry he previously accused of “getting away with murder” and instead focus on increasing private competition and requiring more openness about costs, per the AP. In Rose Garden remarks at the White House, Trump called his plan the “most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American people.” (The plan is here.) But it does not include his campaign pledge to use the massive buying power of the government’s Medicare program to directly negotiate lower prices for seniors. The Washington Post notes that the idea was the one feared most within the industry. The Wall Street Journal reports that drugmakers and pharmacy-benefit managers “suggested privately they were relieved to avoid harder blows from the plan.”

Instead, the administration will pursue a raft of old and new measures intended to improve competition and transparency in the drug-pricing system. Those include a proposal requiring drugmakers to disclose the cost of their medicines in their TV advertisements. Health Secretary Alex Azar said the Food and Drug Administration would immediately examine requiring that information in TV ads. The proposals also include banning the pharmacist “gag rule,” which Trump said prevents druggists from telling customers about lower-cost options so they can save money, and speeding up the approval process for over-the-counter medications so patients can buy more drugs without prescriptions. It’s an approach that avoids a direct confrontation with the powerful pharmaceutical lobby, but it could also underwhelm Americans seeking relief from escalating prescription costs.

Just another con job for the ignorant and lazy…..one good question to ask……”How the heck is this going to lower drug prices in this country?”

Officially ditching his campaign promise to challenge the pharmaceutical industry head-on and allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices—a betrayal that may have something to do with the fact that the White House is currently occupied by former Big Pharma executives in key posts—President Donald Trump on Friday formally unveiled a plan ostensibly aimed at cutting medicine costs that analysts and progressive critics are already slamming as wholly inadequate and “pharma-friendly.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/05/11/trumps-pharma-friendly-drug-plan-denounced-doing-little-or-nothing-lower-prices

This is the same as it ever was…..A Huge Con Job By A Con Artist!

Health Update

Finally a few days away from the mindless dribble of the Right and the profound constipation of the Left…..today I would like to talk about food.

But first…have you ever had an onion start sprouting in storage….I cut the top off with the sprouts and plant them….the last time I got 11 small red onions from my effort…..

And now for the harvest of the morning….my first yellow tomato of the season…..

And finally with home grown ingredients I will make fresh salsa…

On to more important things…..I do not diet per se….I do use a modified version of the Mediterranean diet….I am not a fan of fish so it is off the menu….I read an article about this diet and its possible good results….

Women who’ve survived breast cancer and are looking to prevent a recurrence may be encouraged by news out of a major cancer conference: that adhering to a Mediterranean diet (lots of fruits, veggies, fish, and olive oil) may help fend off the disease’s return, the Guardian reports. For their experiment, revealed at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago, researchers at Piacenza Hospital in Italy studied two groups of women who had been treated for early breast cancer: 199 who ate Mediterranean-style (including an allowance for one alcoholic drink daily) and another 108 who ate what they usually did, but with healthy-eating input from a dietician. After three years of following these diets, none of the ladies who went Mediterranean suffered relapses, while 11 women from the other group did. Science World Report notes these results add onto the news from another, much larger recent JAMA study that found a Mediterranean diet rich in extra-virgin olive oil led to a 68% reduction in the risk of developing breast cancer.

There are drawbacks to the new study—notably, the small sample size, the relatively short follow-up time of three years, and other methodology issues, critics say. “People were asked to participate in one diet or the other,” the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s director of clinical research tells the Guardian. “There is no information about the activity level or change in weight which, for most of the lifestyle research, one needs to be aware of.” And the CEO of UK charity Breast Cancer Care says that while any info about how to possibly keep breast cancer from coming back is a “welcome addition to our toolbox,” there’s no universal panacea. “Lifestyle choices like eating a well-balanced diet, [partaking in] regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight can all help reduce the risk of cancer coming back, but they can’t prevent it completely,” she notes, per the Independent. (America is slowly but surely moving toward a more Mediterranean way of eating.)

For my last piece of health news for my readers…..

The Pharma companies spend billions on research and then make many billions after they release their new drug and then there are a wealth of lawyers that sue the companies after that…….

The problem that few know of is that of the antivirus game……..

The Antivirus industry has a dirty little secret that they really don’t want anyone to know. Despite the claims of their marketing departments, their products are not all that effective. Many of them are only protecting against at best 80% or 90% of the threats out there in the wild at any time, and their protection against ransomware is very bad.

Let’s look at that in more detail. AV products need to protect against two general types of threats: ones that are known and threats that are unknown. The ones that are known, they have a signature for so that they can detect the threat and get rid of it. This is called reactive detection.

Source: The Antivirus Industry’s Dirty Little Secret

And then is the cost of your meds……and as usual it is Obama’s fault that they are so damn expensive……

Evidence is mounting that doctors who receive as little as one meal from a drug company tend to prescribe more expensive, brand-name medications for common ailments than those who don’t.

A study published online Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine found significant evidence that doctors who received meals tied to specific drugs prescribed a higher proportion of those products than their peers. And the more meals they received, the greater share of those drugs they tended to prescribe relative to other medications in the same category.

Source: Big Pharma’s big scam: This is why your prescription medication is so absurdly expensive – Salon.com

My update post is now complete……

Enjoy your weekend…..do yourself something nice….go have some fun…….

One Conspiracy Deserves Another

You know that there is a site that will give you any conspiracy you would like…..about 9/11 or Boston bombing or health care or …..well you see where I am going with this….conspiracies are everywhere…..I found one when reading the other night……

Newser) – It’s pretty easy to make meth at home, and Big Pharma seems intent on keeping it that way, Mother Jones reports. The so-called “one pot” method of meth production relies on pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in medicines like Sudafed and Claritin D. So two states—Oregon and Mississippi—made pseudoephedrine a harder-to-obtain prescription drug, and saw meth-lab numbers fall by 96% and 74%, respectively. But other states that tried passing a similar law ran into Big Pharma’s lobbying juggernaut.

Legislators in two dozen states have tried passing bills since 2009, and were deluged by angry phone calls, ad campaigns, and robocalls to constituents. “They’ll outspend us 100-to-1,” says an Alabama state senator. Lobbyists argue that most US meth comes from Mexico, and Americans need easy access to medicine. True, but meth is cutting a scary path of addiction, burn victims, and ruined homes through America. Big Pharma’s “pull in Congress is so strong,” says an aide in Washington, that “every time we would schedule a meeting … anybody who got wind of it would have a meeting with someone from the pharmaceutical industry. They got scared of it.”

Drug companies would rather see their product used in the making of an illegal substances than cooperate with the enforcement people…..see…..profits are more important than anything in big business.

Drug Lobbies Win Again

Step into the way back machine and visit the early days of the health debate….recall that Obama came out and said that the drug companies were on board and that they would cut $80 billion over a number of yewars.  It was held as a great deal and that the companies were willing to work with the admin to lower health costs.

That was then…this is now……

Kate Randall writing for wsws.org:

The Obama White House has acknowledged it made a deal with drug makers to block moves in Congress to obtain any cost savings beyond the $80 billion already agreed to by the pharmaceutical lobby.

The New York Times reported Thursday that, in return for the $80 billion agreement, the Obama administration pledged that it would work to block any health care legislation that would allow the government to negotiate price-setting on drugs.

The deal is further evidence of the corporate forces calling the shots in Obama’s health care overhaul. While touring the country claiming the plan will make the health care giants’ “honest,” the administration is cutting behind-the-scenes deals to protect and boost their profits.

Details about the pharmaceuticals’ $80 billion offer have been vague, but they will likely come—not as a handout by the drug industry—but in the form of lower patient co-pays on prescriptions, or as modest discounts on reimbursements to the industry for expanded government-backed medical coverage.

In an industry that generates annual US sales of more than $300 billion, the $80 billion is minimal. The more likely scenario is that $80 billion will be more than offset by the increased profits the pharmaceutical industry stands to make on prescriptions purchased by new patients under insurance coverage that they would be mandated to purchase under the new health care legislation.

And you thought all was moving along swimmingly….think again.

Once again the Obama Admin is making concessions to the industry that is profitting heavily from the current health situation in the US.  The Dems have taken away the single payer option, the public option looks doomed and now they are tryiong to protect the drug industry from any accountability for their gouging of the American people.

I have said and written on many occassions that if there is a health care bill for the president to sign that it will fall far short of the intention of covering ALL Americans for their health care.  I think there will be a deal, but not something that the President can be proud of in future debates.

Once again, as usual, the American people will be the losers and the politicians will get their blood money from the industry.