• ranzispa@mander.xyzEnglish
    2 hours

    I also hate the system (and I work in research, meaning that my work directly goes into the profits of these companies) however it does eventually lead to better drugs getting developed and through the years their prices do decrease steeply once the patent terminates.

    I hope we came up with a better system to handle this.

    I’d like a public European pharmaceutical company to exist, that would solve many of these problems.

    • blaggle42@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2 hours

      We should gamify it. We should socialize the medicine, so everyone can afford it - I mean, come on- but then:

      If you work in a lab which creates a life saving drug - you get a ticker tape parade through every fucking city in the USA - you get a bronze statue in the “park of medical heroes.” Everyone knows you as “the man who fucking cured HSHBRHF variant 4x.”

  • RunawayFixer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4 hours

    The generic name for Revlimid is Lenalidomide.
    "Since its initial approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2005 for the treatment of certain cancers, the price of Lenalidomide, manufactured by Celgene, has risen significantly. At its launch, the cost per pill was $218, equating to an annual cost of approximately $55,000 for a standard regimen. Following FDA approval for multiple myeloma in mid-2006, the price per pill increased to $280, or about $70,560 annually. As of 2023, the price per pill had reached $892.

    Since its approval, Revlimid cost has increased 26 times. According to a deposition by a Celgene executive, marked as highly confidential, the manufacturing cost of each Revlimid pill has remained approximately $0.25 throughout this period. Celgene claimed its patent protected Revlimid until 2027, and has engaged in several practices to prevent other manufacturers from producing a generic version of the drug, including refusing to sell the drug to other drug makers for testing purposes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenalidomide

    Lenalidomide became available as a generic medicine in the Netherlands in 2022. The price in the Netherlands then dropped from €218 to €0.90 per pill. https://www.margriet.nl/gezondheid/kankermedicijn-revlimid-goedkoper-waarom~b43e1f4b/

  • forkDestroyer@infosec.pubEnglish
    4 hours

    Wonder what would happen if civilians gained the means to make some of this medication at home.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 hours

    This is why we have antivaxxers.

    Who can trust an industry that so blatantly exploits the sick and the dying?

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    10 hours

    Pharma profits are too high, but you can’t really tell by that kind of comparison. The parent company (Bristol Myers Squibb) that produces Revlimid has profit margins around 30% which is high, but obviously nowhere near what those numbers suggest.

    The difference is the cost of development of both successful drugs and drugs which go nowhere. So if the company made zero profit by reducing prices across the board, the price of Revlimid could come down to $666 per pill, still each costing 25 cents - that obviously still looks crazy!

    • hark@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5 hours

      How much do executive payouts, lobbying, and marketing costs take out from those profit margins?

      • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
        5 hours

        At least some of this information is publicly available and you can go look it up. Or I can. But before that, what do you guess those costs are? Their yearly revenue is about $48bn, to give you a starting point.

        My point is that the only way to make sense of this situation is to look at it in another way, and if you do look at it that way, you see that, yes, they are making excessive profits. But not so excessive as the original perspective would say.

        In case you’re skeptical still, take your estimate and ask: do you think the company spends so much on all of those items that it would make a comparison of the price to the cost of manufacturing an individual pill look reasonable?

        Because I don’t think there is any realistic number you can come up with that would make this line of argument sensible, which is my point. Do you complain about having to pay $10 to buy a book when printing a single book costs like $2?

        • turmacar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3 hours

          $10 no.

          If that book enabled sick people to continue living another year, and they started out charging $2000 and gradually increased that to $10000 while the book production cost remained at $2, there would begin to be many ethical questions.

          You’re right that the per-pill cost is only the start of what it takes to develop / test / manufacture / distribute / market the pill. But the first two are done by the time the pill comes to market and the last is minimal because you have a captive market, people who have the cancer the pill is treatment for.

          Increasing the cost year after year, because you have a captive market of people that will die without your product, should raise significant ethical and legal questions. Especially because large parts of the research and testing are publicly subsidized anyway.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8 hours

      Pharma companies could also be considered government and worker owned and pay for the cost with taxpayer money…oh wait, we already subsidize this stuff with our taxes.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
    12 hours

    biologics(this includes cancer biologics, autoimmune,psoriasis, eczema, and some rare diseases) is where pharms make thier money. because they are most thousands a month, wholesale, insurance is very stingy about covering certain biologics. although some do have a “coupon” option.

    • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4 hours

      The price of biologics kills me. I know it costs about $20 dollars for a month of GLP-1 agonists, because I’ve made similar peptides myself in grad school. Something like a Solid Phase Peptide Synthesizer runs $10-250K, but the cost to synthesize a 40 amino acid linear peptide at industrial scale is like…$0.30 USD per milligram. Shorter chain peptides are even cheaper. A 15AA linear peptide can be as low as $0.01/mg.

      There are of course other expenses, especially labor, facilities, certification, and waste disposal, but these companies are still easily making 40-50% profit margins on biologics. Compare this to non-biologics pharmaceutical profit margins around 15-25%, or for other industry comparisons, grocery stores around 1-3%, restaurants 3-10%, and software at 15-20%.

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11 hours

      Oh yeah love that coupon. They approve the first few months to show you it will work and then jack up the price

  • lechekaflan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13 hours

    This fucking disparity is why there’s now a parallel industry revolving around equally questionable alternative treatments.

  • Chef@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    23 hours

    The pharma industry likes to defend its pricing by saying:

    The second pill cost 25¢.

    The first pill cost $800 million.

    What they never actually say is that the US government (thereby the taxpayers) heavily subsidized most of that cost.

    Big Pharma could use its own Mario Brother, just saying.

  • Kühlschrank@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 hours

    It’s almost like health care and free market economics aren’t compatible

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    23 hours

    Bristol Myers Squibb also makes my cancer drug, Sprycel, which has a similar price tag at just over $18k a month without insurance.

    They also make my mother’s heart medication Eliquis, which is similarly costly as well.

    • yabai@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19 minutes

      If you haven’t already, you should be looking at generic dasatinib, released more than a year ago. It’ll be a fraction of the cost.

    • Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.ukEnglish
      3 minutes

      My sister in law in Indonesia has (had? Not sure) stage four cancer and is only alive over the last 4 years because the family are having to pay for the expensive drug. I can’t remember the name, but it was the on the UKs NHS refused to use because of the cost.

      The medication matches the household income. That’s two fully grown adults and one working child.

      I know the NHS here is always talked about as being in trouble, but in still glad we have it.

    • Bio bronk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7 hours

      as far as I know they heavily subsidize the cost especially if you don’t have insurance