In setting the price of the drug is important its utility and value
In January 2012, the Office of the United States by the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Kalydeco, who became the first drug to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis. It made it just three months after his examination. It was one of the fastest new drug approvals in the history of the agency. Designed and developed by the drug company Vertex Pharmaceuticals has appointed him the price at 294,000 dollars a year, and Kalydeco has become one of the most expensive drugs in the world.
The company also promised to provide them free of all patients in the U.S. who do not have insurance, and whose insurance does not cover cycle costs. Doctors and patients are enthusiastic about this medication, because it helps to save lives, and because there is no other remedy. Insurance companies and the government willingly went to the expense.
A few months later was approved medicine for colorectal cancer Zaltrap. This drug was developed by a new biopharmaceutical company Regeneron, and selling it was the French drug maker Sanofi. Clinical trials have shown that Zaltrap works no better than a cure for cancer Avastin company Roche, which increases the average life expectancy of patients with colorectal cancer at a later stage only 1.4 months. However, the company Sanofi evaluated Zaltrap to $ 11,000 per month, which is two times more expensive means of Avastin.
But suddenly there was resistance. Doctors from New York's Memorial Cancer Center, Sloan-Kettering, which is one of the leading hospitals in the world, decided to prescribe Zaltrap sick does not make sense. They announced their decision (it was the first time that a well-known doctors said their decisive no to expensive cancer drugs) in the pages of New York Times.
Three weeks later, Sanofi essentially reduced the price by half by introducing a system of discounts for doctors and hospitals. However, the British health authorities said they pay for treatment will not.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012 approved 39 new drugs - the largest number in the last fifteen years. This is a sign that the pharmaceutical industry is chosen from a long period of stagnation.
This rapidly applauded Wall Street because many companies end patents on their most popular products, and they may face a reduction in profits after years of research rather featureless. Most new drugs or a narrow directivity, and is intended for the treatment of rare diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, or only slightly better than existing cancer drugs. And all of them are extremely expensive.
But if you take a closer look at the advertising and promotion of Kalydeco Zaltrap, then show up startling differences in the way companies assess the drug and how they justify its price. It also suggests that in the future will be very expensive medication routine.
Thanks to health insurance, reduce costs through surcharges and programs improving access to medicine for uninsured people, few Americans spend even on the most expensive drugs over a thousand dollars a year. The main buyers of drugs in the United States are not sick and do not even private doctors (although the doctor may raise the demand for the drug), and the government (through the Medicare and Medicaid) and private insurance companies. And since the money is paid insurers and the state, companies set prices that are not available to most people. On the economic jargon, the demand for drugs in terms of price-inelastic: an increase in prices does not reduce the frequency of use of a drug.
Prices are set and rise in line with what the market until it is able to bear this burden. And those who pay the companies will pay a price that they exhibit - just to get an effective medicine that has no alternative. So in setting prices for the drug companies are asking themselves questions that do not have virtually nothing to do with its real value.
This is not scientific - said the pharmaceutical industry veteran and former CEO of Genzyme Henri Termeer (Henri Termeer). - This is a work by feel.
In such a system is initially laid the problem: after all, it most paid by the state, and the doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacy managers, managers Drug compensation, pharmaceutical firms and investors are making huge profits from the treatment of sick people regardless of how truly they prolong the life of patients. Drug companies claim that they just need to earn billions of dollars in medical preparations, since the research is large failure rate, and since they have to convince investors that invest in research that's right. This is true, but it is also true that the United States, where the population is less than 5% of the global population, buys more than 50% of all drugs in the world, for which a prescription.
And it buys them at that price, which should provide subsidies to the rest of the industrialized world, where the same drugs are cheaper, although the majority of poor countries can not afford them even at such low prices.
However, we must ask ourselves the question: when the high price of the drug is acceptable? Perhaps it is the case that exposes the Vertex 841 dollar price for two pills a day (and so every day in the life of the patient), when the tablets are saving the man's life. And it is another case where Sanofi offers a cure for cancer, which is two times more expensive than others, but no significant advantage has not.
Price shock
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