Cancer may have a cure, Big Pharma says "no profit.. no way"

Dear Akragon,

You've got a great heart, good for you. Something that you've said a couple of times is sounding more and more sad:

something should be done about this ... but what?

For this post, I will assume that everything you've said is perfectly correct and accepted as settled. It seems that the only remaining problem we have is how to get pharmaceutical companies to take less profit while maintaining their operations. (If I'm wrong in this, just stop reading and post a reply telling me that I went wrong and explaining what the problem is.)

New problem 1) How do we determine the correct amount of profit? Is it the number of dollars? The percentage return on their investment? Should it be industry wide profit or individual company profit? This is going to be a tough job requiring government laws which will be challenged for years.

New problem 2) Say a company has made their maximum allowed profit by September; why shouldn't they just close down for the year?

New problem 3) If the profit limits apply only to pharmaceutical companies, won't investors take out all their money and invest in a sector that doesn't have a limit on profits? I would.

New problem 4) As pharmaceuticals are so important, will they be prevented from closing down and going out of business if they don't like the new rules? Will they be prevented from moving to some country that doesn't have such rules? If the answer is "yes," how in the world will they be made to keep working?

I've got a couple of other questions, but I'm beginning to think the answer to YOUR question is "Sorry, nothing can be done." At least not the way you'd like it to be done.

I hope I'm wrong, please show me where.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952

For this post, I will assume that everything you've said is perfectly correct and accepted as settled.

Please don't assume that... i make no claims to be abolutely right ever...

It seems that the only remaining problem we have is how to get pharmaceutical companies to take less profit while maintaining their operations.

Its not really about the profits my friend. Its about the lack of compassion from these companies. They're concerned with their investors not the people that they are (supposedly) are trying to help.

New problem 1) How do we determine the correct amount of profit? Is it the number of dollars? The percentage return on their investment? Should it be industry wide profit or individual company profit? This is going to be a tough job requiring government laws which will be challenged for years.

The profit doesn't matter, though these companies do make accessive amounts of said profit. Which is a minor problem.

New problem 2) Say a company has made their maximum allowed profit by September; why shouldn't they just close down for the year?

Im not suggesting they should have a profit cap. The money they make is not important, but considering the actual amount they do make... they should have no issues with taking a loss now and again to benifit humanity instead of their bank accounts.

New problem 3) If the profit limits apply only to pharmaceutical companies, won't investors take out all their money and invest in a sector that doesn't have a limit on profits? I would.

You likely would not... If you invested in one of these companies... and you recieve (for example) 100k in profits each year as an investor.... This company takes a loss because they decide to market a drug that actually cures something. Then lets say your profits drop from 100k a year to 50k a year... you would not withdraw your investment because you'll still benifiting from this investment. Consider the millions of other drugs you're still making profit on... Yes you don't make as much as you were making before this loss, but these companies would not go bankrupt... there would still be a return on your investment. Im sure investors would be pissed either way, but thats greed for ya.

New problem 4) As pharmaceuticals are so important, will they be prevented from closing down and going out of business if they don't like the new rules? Will they be prevented from moving to some country that doesn't have such rules? If the answer is "yes," how in the world will they be made to keep working?

Again, even a large profit loss because of an investment that benifits humanity would not compare to the actual earnings of these companies. A drop from 50billion to 40 billion might be a concern to greedy people... but they would still be racking up huge profits from other drugs for symtomatic issues.

I've got a couple of other questions, but I'm beginning to think the answer to YOUR question is "Sorry, nothing can be done." At least not the way you'd like it to be done.

Please ask away... but remember i am no one. Sadly there is no answer to this issue, at least not in reality. I have my ideals which sadly do not match the majority of society. Little people don't count in such circumstances where money is involved. Money corrupts, power corrupts.... and these companies have an abundance of both.

Sadly there is no answer to this issue, at least not in reality. I have my ideals which sadly do not match the majority of society.

You may, I fear, be very right. I wonder though, if society does not share your ideals, or just can't find a way to put them into practice. I could come down on either side of that question; I just don't know. I think it's important to know which it is.

As you say, it's all quite sad. I wish I could think of a way out.

With respect,
Charles1952

Originally posted by charles1952

Sadly there is no answer to this issue, at least not in reality. I have my ideals which sadly do not match the majority of society.

You may, I fear, be very right. I wonder though, if society does not share your ideals, or just can't find a way to put them into practice. I could come down on either side of that question; I just don't know. I think it's important to know which it is.

As you say, it's all quite sad. I wish I could think of a way out.

With respect,
Charles1952

If everyone shared my ideals there would be no issues in this world. My belief is that we should care about and love everyone regardless of their situation,religion, creed, race...etc

If society shared my beliefs and ideals we would have a perfect world, not based on money, but on helping everyone that needs it. There should be no price on the necessities of life....food, shelter, companionship. If there is a cure for a horible disease it should be released imediately without quesitoning the profits or losses.

Though again SADLY most do not share my beliefs. Even most people who claim to understand the source of my beliefs rarely walk that path...

If people understood the concepts of Love, these issues would cease to exist! The problem is for it to work everyone would have to share my beliefs and ideals, which would include the CEO's of these companies.

That will never happen IMHO...

Yes i am a skeptic of that possibility ever happening

reply to post by Praetorius


Cheap. I wouldn't exactly call $209 for 100g cheap. Looks like someone is already over pricing it. Profit makes the world go round.

reply to post by kindred
True, but then again I'm not sure of dosing requirements, so that amount might last a good while, and you also want to weigh this expense against any of the range of normally-incurred medical expenses related conditions and treatments can involve.

And for cancer, depending on # of doses provided and how long treatment is required, it really might not be bad at all. I got a fungal infection from pond swimming once that required medicine over $10 a pill that ended up being about this costly.

So, it's all relative

Maybe we should treat pharmacy like other organization company offering goods and service. If they sell something, they must make the drugs met what they claim and give warranty of it. I know it sounds so silly, but i work with repairing something, and if i failed, they wont pay me, or even worse they might ask me to pay them if the stuffs get worse. That is really not fair.

Seriously i think for every company offering goods and service, gov should put them in the same box, must be responsible for what it purpose. Consumer right protection must be the same for company selling drugs and other product. If it is not worked, it is broken. But if pharmacy want to stand behind foundation organization, they should not make a lots of profit. I have lots of family who work in big pharmacy. So i know the profit is really huge, hundreds percent of it. Mostly with medium and cheap drugs with no patent anymore, it mostly consist of corn flour with few another extract.
At least that is what happen in here.

Mind if I explore your ideas a bit?

If I understand you, drug companies should offer guarantees that their product will work, and pay people if the drugs cause any harm.

I suppose you know that in the drug business there is no such thing as "a sure thing" Sometimes a drug just won't work for a particular person. And just about everything in the world has side effects, some we don't notice and some cause serious harm and death. Akragon has pointed out that for some people, like those dying of cancer, side effects don't matter at all.

Drug companies rely on statistics to function. For each new drug, they plan how much money has to be set aside to pay for the bad results drugs will always have. If the law says they have to pay ten times as much for each person the drug doesn't help, they just set aside ten times as much. That becomes part of the cost of the drug.

Your other idea concerns profit. You are right to say that, once you have the ingredients, it doesn't cost much to turn them into a pill, bottle it and ship it out. But there are many other costs that have to be paid before the company can start counting its profit. Some of them have been talked about in the posts earlier in this thread.

I would be simply astonished if any pharmaceutical company made even 50% profit year after year. It may be possible, and others can so inform me, but I would rush to invest in such a company if that were so.

Concerning drugs that have lost their patent. Without a patent, anybody can make them. Selling them only takes lowering your price below the other guy's. You can always find cheaper aspirin.

I don't know if I've understood you correctly, but I hope there's something here that helps.

Originally posted by maung
Maybe we should treat pharmacy like other organization company offering goods and service. If they sell something, they must make the drugs met what they claim and give warranty of it. I know it sounds so silly, but i work with repairing something, and if i failed, they wont pay me, or even worse they might ask me to pay them if the stuffs get worse. That is really not fair.

Seriously i think for every company offering goods and service, gov should put them in the same box, must be responsible for what it purpose. Consumer right protection must be the same for company selling drugs and other product. If it is not worked, it is broken. But if pharmacy want to stand behind foundation organization, they should not make a lots of profit. I have lots of family who work in big pharmacy. So i know the profit is really huge, hundreds percent of it. Mostly with medium and cheap drugs with no patent anymore, it mostly consist of corn flour with few another extract.
At least that is what happen in here.

I agree to an extent, but remember... these companies arn't in the cureing business... Cures are not profitible, because once you're cured of said afliction, you no longer have to buy drugs. Thats the last thing they want. Ideally they would have you buy many different meds for the rest of your life... that is profitible.

reply to post by charles1952

I would be simply astonished if any pharmaceutical company made even 50% profit year after year. It may be possible, and others can so inform me, but I would rush to invest in such a company if that were so.

Here you go my friend... But you won't be able to invest in these companies unless you're quite rich...

www.guardian.co.uk...

Also keep in mind their profits are up from their previous profits, which were already waaaaay up....

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
Why instantly cure for $2 when you can treat for $1,000s for years?

It's definitely a crime against humanity. Profits have always been worth more than life.

The money is in the treatment. Not the cure. I take a shot 3 times a week for my MS. These tiny syringes contain less than a small eye dropper of medication. Half of it is an air bubble. This medication costs over 3K per month. Fortunately for me my insurance pays 100%. I have trouble with balance and walking. My doctor wanted me to take another medication that helps. The meds cost $1200 per month. My insurance wouldn't pay a dime so I had to pass.
Would you have thought 20 years ago that in 21st century America people would still be choosing between food an life saving meds when you can go to Mexico and get a lot of rx meds dirt cheap. This is another thing that makes me wonder what happened to the America I grew up in.

reply to post by kismet815


Have you heard of Liberation Therapy?

liberation-treatment.com...

reply to post by Akragon


Thanx for the link. Yes, I heard about this a few months ago. Very interesting. There is a "treatment" for crippling fatigue that I can definitely say works. Raw Honey. My husband is a delivery driver. He delivers to this mom and pop burger joint on Thursdays. Once I was diagnosed, one of the women told him about her dad. She said that his fatigue was so bad that he could hardly walk and used a wheelchair most of the time. Within a couple of weeks of taking his first spoonful, he had the energy to walk indoors with a cane. Within 6 weeks, he was back at work. When I started taking it, I did it with a grain of salt. Well, let me tell you that by week 2 I stopped taking 3-4 hour naps everyday. Now, I rarely take a nap during the day. The honey did not help with my pain and I still suffer from dizziness/vertigo but just having the energy to load the dishwasher, make my bed and take a shower w/o shower chair made me feel a little normal again. I have chronic pain. My Dr. was getting ready to write a script for oxycontin, but I told him that I was terrified of that drug. I took it once for a work injury. I didn't eat for 3 days. He then told me about an alternative that some of his patients say worked for their debilitating pain. I had nothing to lose so I tried it and when I did, I experienced complete pain relief for the first time in 10 months. 10 months of 24/7 pain. The best my pain Meds did was make the pain go from a12 on a scale of 1-10 to a 6 or7 with side effects.

reply to post by charles1952

I would be simply astonished if any pharmaceutical company made even 50% profit year after year. It may be possible, and others can so inform me, but I would rush to invest in such a company if that were so.

50% overall is impractical, but still the margins are the most lucrative of any industry.
Food for thought..

1. The "R&D Scare" Argument. "This legislation...could deal a crippling blow to pharmaceutical innovation and research..."
The Facts:
The Pharmaceutical Industry is the most profitable in the U.S. in terms of profit margin. Ending price discrimination against seniors will not shut down new drug R&D. The industry:
• Spends less on R&D than goes into profits. In 1999, the top five pharmaceutical companies (ranked by sales) all allocated a higher proportion of their revenue to net income than to R&D.3
• Spends $11 billion annually on advertising and marketing.4
• Makes $26.2 billion annually in profits.5
• Has a profit margin of 28.7 percent, nearly three times higher than the profit margin of other manufacturers of branded consumer goods.6
• Ranks #1 inprofits among all industries on all measures: return on revenues, assets, and equity.5
The drug industry has cried wolf before about R&D - the sky didn't fall then, and it won't now:
• The brand name pharmaceutical industry said that increasing the availability of generic drugs, part of the 1984 Waxman-Hatch Act, threatened R&D. But over the five year period following passage of the legislation, pharmaceutical companies more than doubled their investment in research and development, from $4.1 billion to $8.4 billion.7
• In 1990, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PhRMA predecessor) opposed legislation enacted into law to reduce Medicaid drug prices because "ncentives for pharmaceutical research will be reduced."8 But between 1990 and 1997, pharmaceutical companies again more than doubled their spending on research and development, from $8.4 billion in 1990 to $18.9 billion in 1997.7
2. The Spectre of Price Controls Argument: "The 'Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act' would place federal price controls on the prescription drug market..."
The Facts:
H.R. 664/S. 731 does not set prices.
It uses the purchasing power of Medicare's 40 million Beneficiaries to get the same low price as drug companies charge favored customers like HMOs, large insurers, and Federal agencies like the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense.
The Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act does not tell drug companies what prices they must charge. They are free to negotiate with large volume purchasers and set any prices they choose. H.R. 664/S. 731 simply requires that the companies give seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare their best negotiated price.
Section 3c of the bill requires drug companies to make Medicare outpatient drugs available to pharmacies at the lower of (1) the lowest price paid by any agency or department of the United States or (2) the manufacturer's best price for the drug.
3. The Greedy Pharmacists Argument: "The legislation contains no guarantee that the discounts will be passed down to the elderly..."

www.citizen.org...

The industry's profits were still an extraordinary 14% of sales, well above the median of 4.6% for other industries.2 A business that is consistently so profitable can hardly be considered risky.

www.cmaj.ca...

edit on 18-9-2011 by speculativeoptimist because: (no reason given)