Insulin giant pulls medicine from Greece over price cut

Insulin giant pulls medicine from Greece over price cut

news.bbc.co.uk

The world's leading supplier of the anti-diabetes drug insulin is withdrawing a state-of-the-art medication from Greece.

Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, objects to a government decree ordering a 25% price cut in all medicines.

A campaign group has condemned the move as "brutal capitalist blackmail".

More than 50,000 Greeks with diabetes use Novo Nordisk's product, which is injected via an easy-to-use fountain pen-like device.

A spokesman for the Danish pharmaceutical company said it was withdrawing the product from the Greek market because the price cut would force its busi

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Hmm, well this I had not heard about until just now.

Greece forcing companies to take a 25% price cut from products?

Now, I don't mind having Big Pharma offer lower prices as they already make Billions off over priced medication, but this seems a bit much.

Perhaps somebody could explain the legality behind the move. It's stated to been a plan to lower costs, although Greece apparently owes Big Pharma tons of money.

Thoughts?

~Keeper

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Tooth
I would be more interested to know how much the company is making before and after the twenty five percent price cut.

Originally posted by RedGolem
Tooth
I would be more interested to know how much the company is making before and after the twenty five percent price cut.

I bet you it's pennies.

Anything under millions is just pennies to Big Pharma.

~Keeper

Very interesting.

Peak oil -> economic slide -> Darwin working overtime

See? That's the problem with socialism. The Greek economy is in the dumper and people can't afford these medications. So the government jumps in to enforce its nanny state by making the anti-capitalism move of forcing a company to lower prices. In a capitalist world a company has the right to sell to whomever they wish at ahtever price they can get. Let the Greek diabetics die. That's the way it's supposed to work. If you have the money you can afford the medicine. If not who needs you? Damned liberal socialists...

You do know that they are only pulling out the simple to use Novodisk. It is less cumbersome to deal with, the medication that is used in the Novodisk is still widely available in Greece. Just the delivery mechanism which was heavily researched would be not be available anymore.

Its like saying we will not be selling you Ferrari's any more, but our Fords are still available.

I'm a type 1 diabetic, and I use Novo Nordisk insulin to control it.

I think it's wrong for Greece to expect NN to run at a loss, that's not how business/capitalism works. Companies shouldn't be expected to give hand-outs to governments that can't control thier economies. I'll be siding with the big, evil pharma company this time, but only because I think the opposition is wrong in this case.

I'm just glad I don't live in Greece right now.