Medical

Industrial Complex!

It's Official! Curing Patients Is Bad for Business

Milton Packer describes the end result of profit-dominated drug development

Pharmaceutical companies are developing new drugs in only two therapeutic areas these days -- cancer and rare diseases. Why? These are the only therapeutic areas where exorbitant pricing is tolerated by payers. How exorbitant are we talking about? Most new drugs for cancer and rare diseases are being priced above $400,000 a year per patient. Some drugs are being priced at $1 million per treatment. And prices continue to soar. Who loses from this pricing practice? You might think the patients with cancer or with rare diseases are most likely to suffer. But that isn't true. To cover these exorbitant costs for even a small number of people, payers slash their expenditures in other therapeutic areas, and these cuts affect millions of people. For example, instead of agreeing to pay for the best treatment for diabetes for $1,500, payers approve the use of a second-rate treatment for $75. Physicians are not good at challenging payers, so most patients will get the second-rate treatment. So the patients who lose the most are typically those who do not have cancer or rare diseases. Actually, nearly everyone else loses when a company prices a novel drug at extreme levels.

According to an article by Tae Kim on CNBC, Goldman Sachs issued a report (by Salveen Richter) that suggested that drug developers might want to think twice about making drugs that were too effective. Richter's report, entitled "The Genome Revolution," was issued on April 10 and says: 

"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies.... While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow." 

Translation: 

If you develop a new drug that cures people rapidly, then patients will not need to take the drug on an ongoing basis; that limits the amount of money a company can make. 

Curing cancer ‘not a realistic goal,’ doctors focus on managing instead of curing disease 

DYI:  Addictive drug dealers:  Big Pharma…Goldman Sachs and the American Cancer Society are so brazen they are willing to say straight to your face that chronic consumption of drug therapies [using therapy loosely] is their preferred business model.  This is no different than a dealer of addictive drugs.  And yet big Pharma has that covered with their opioids as they make billions [world wide] with an addicted patience.  However that model has a shortened life cycle due to increase tolerance and its eventual lethal dose thus killing off Pharma’s revenue stream.

Big Pharma is now celebrating as they now have found a way to coerce patience [if they want to stay alive] with diabetes, cancer, heart disease etc. to swallow outrageously expensive drugs without the lethal dose as in the case of opioids.  

What is required is a two fold process:   One…Through legislation allows re-importation of drugs thus ending big Pharma’s U.S. price fixing schemes.  Two…Enforce 100 year old legislation on all aspects of the Medical Industrial Complex’s price fixing and monopolies collapsing cost by 75% to 85% [that’s not a typo!].

                                                 9

Sisters

Of

Institutional Change

1.)     End the Federal Reserve

2.)     Repeal 17th Amendment – Reinstate Federal Senators chosen by State Legislators.

1. Term Limits – Constitutional Amendment

A. Two six year terms for Senators

B. Three terms House of Representatives

3.)     Repeal 16th Amendment – Income tax replace with value added tax.

4.)     Pass the Balanced Budget Amendment

5.)     Exit the United Nations

6.)     Reign in the Medical Industrial Complex

a. Enforce Anti-Trust Laws

b. Pass Legislation for re-importation of ethical drugs

7.)     End Federal and Private Student Loans

8.)     Trust Bust Monopolies

               9.)     Reduce & Decentralize the Federal Government

 DYI