Millions of Americans struggle on a daily basis to afford medicine in the United States which is the highest in the world. Many seek affordable drugs by driving to Canada or seeking medicine (as well as medical care) in India. Yet, one of the first things that President Obama did in the new health care law was to cave to a demand by the powerful pharmaceutical lobby to drop provisions guaranteeing cheaper medicine. The lobby then got Congress to block two measures to guarantee affordable medicine. With billions at stake, Congress and the White House again yielded to the demands of this industry, which is sapping the life savings away of millions of families. Given this history, many are concerned about a meeting planned between Obama and the Prime Minister of India. Public interest groups object that Obama is threatening retaliation against India in the hopes of blocking one of the major alternatives for families in acquiring affordable medicine. Congress has also again responded to industry demands for pressure in India to change its laws and, as a result, raise the cost of medicine. Doctors Without Borders, a highly respected medical group, has denounced the effort of the Obama Administration as threatening basic health care for its own citizens and those around the world.
Obama will meet with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh this week at the White House to demand a change to its intellectual property laws. In addition to a long record of yielding to the demands of the pharmaceutical industry, Obama has also yielded to copyright and trademark hawks who has secured ever increasing criminal and civil penalties in the field. Here, the industry wants to cut off the supply of affordable medicine coming out of India due to its large generic drug industry. The industry is alarmed by the fact that India’s market is forcing the cost of drugs down for HIV, TB, and cancer by more than 90 percent.
Critics charge that Obama is basically reading from a script written by Pfizer and the industry in threatening retaliation if India does not change its intellectual property laws to limit the availability of generic drugs. There is no question that India’s legal system needs reform and intellectual property rules could be tightened. However, Doctors Without Borders insists that this is a raw effort to shutdown a country offering millions of people affordable medicine. If successful, the impact on the sick could be breathtaking if not life taking. Most AIDS drugs are generic and India supplies a huge amount of the HIV medicines.
The problem is that Indian courts have already supported the claims of Indian companies to produce such generics. For example, Novartis tried for seven years to block a low-cost generic salt form of the cancer drug imatinib, marketed as Gleevec. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that the company had every right to produce the drug and that the company, and by extension the U.S., was trying to impose effective monopoly pricing on consumers.
Likewise, a case involving Bayer shows how such inflated pricing works. Bayer lost an effort to block an Indian drug that slashed the cost of a kidney cancer drug by 97 percent. That’s right, 97 percent. Bayer wants to sell it as a cost of $4,500 per month.
Obama has increased the government paying for such drugs for the poorest Americans, but that healthcare deal still allowed drug companies to pull in windfall profits at public expense. Moreover, for middle income families, such costs (or the resulting higher insurance costs) have sapped away income at a time of diminishing wealth. The companies have a valid argument that some protection is needed to allow them to recoup billions in research to develop such amazing drugs. Intellectual property law encourage innovation by guaranteeing such profits that in turn encourage the investment in new research. However, with one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington (populated by former members and staff members who helped draft earlier laws), the drug industry has imposed obscene (and at times ruinous) costs on families who struggle to pay for life-sustaining medicine.
Doctors Without Borders is leading a campaign opposing Obama’s efforts to cut off the largest market for affordable drugs — a move that would leave families captive to the pricing set by these companies.
Randyjet:
“That is why we have public utility commissions. This needs to be extended to…pharmaceutical companies…. “
Pharma is likely the most regulated industry on the planet. Perhaps you have heard of the FDA?
ginger, I see you have no idea of how the FDA regulates the drug industry by your comment. The FDA does NOT set prices, nor does it do anything in an economic sphere as the CAB used to do for the airlines. PUCs are the ones who set rates that can be charged by utilities.
Mike Spindell:
” The sample program is accompanied with incentives for Doctors to prescribed their over priced drugs …”
Nonsense. What you describe would put doctor and pharma rep in jail. Although, I love the gratuitous “overpriced” swipe. That always plays well in Peoria.
GingerB,
The pseudonym taken from a great drummer, by a pharmaceutical drummer. Do you get paid well for your clacking?
Lottakatz,
“Big pharma is a monster, just like insurgence companies are.”
Insurgence companies.
I like it, actually it’s very descriptive.
Love your posts LK, really do.
Nic
September 26, 2013 at 1:13 pm
“To me it’s as simple as not wanting to live in luxury at someone else’s expense.”
Nic, simply stated, simply said, simply beautiful. It is the golden rule through a different lens.
Again showing you have no idea what socialism actually entails, Bron.
Here’s a hint: the primary focus of a mixed economy, let alone a socialist economy, is not the protection of big industry profits and profiteers. It’s maximizing social benefit to the citizens in critical market sectors while constraining costs by either limiting or eliminating private profits in those sectors altogether.
What form of government and economic model does have protection of big industry profits and profiteers as a primary goal utilized as a tool to align industry with nationalism and imperialist aggression?
Here’s another hint: you should be thinking of meatballs, trains running on time and bald guys swinging from lamp posts.
Our system is not socialistic. It’s crony capitalism. And that’s corporatism. And that’s neo-fascism.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for big pharma when the cost of some MS drugs reach 60k per year (Avonex) or the CEO of Express Scripts make 50+ million a year.
Mike Spindell:
Nonsense?
Then why is Obama protecting pharma? We have a heavily regulated, semi-socialistic, somehat market economy and have for a very long time. It isnt working very well.
This story is a symptom of the problems which arise when government gets involved in the market.
Of Course…. When War & Drugs are your only two profit making concerns….. you’ve got to worry about protecting your bottom line…. You go… ”Spineless”
Justice Holmes: “Obama never cared about universal health care….”
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I disagree.
I voted for him the first time for two reasons, three actually, and was self-certain something would be done about one of them: health care. I believed that because he said he watched his mom, while she had [and actually was dying from] cancer on the phone arguing with the insurance company. I knew he’d give it a good shot because it was personal and doubtlessly a long-simmering grievance with him. If he wanted nothing else he wanted ‘evens’.
If anyone thinks that any program can get passed without insuring continued profits for the corporations that rule this country they are naive. There were meetings with the pharmaceutical companies before the legislation was drawn up. Any big corporate owner can deep-six any legislation it chooses. Those meetings and the fact that the legislation banned drug price negotiation were the quid pro quo needed to be allowed -be allowed -to proceed. If you followed the issue from the beginning and didn’t know what was coming you weren’t paying attention. Same for the insurance companies.
The ACA is the camel’s nose in the tent flap and will help millions of people. The future always holds the promise of building something better on the shaky and muck-covered foundation of what exists now. Medicare and Medicaid were not at their beginnings what they are now. Time will tell. Yeah, I wanted and want single payer. Like this was the first time my government disappointed me, lol, maybe some other, future generation will see it but not me or mine.
So now some aspect of the political agreement and its bill struck 5 years ago comes due again. Is that really a surprise to anyone? Really?
years ago the fda would not approve a drug until it had been vetted thoroughly thru trials and experiments today the meds are on the market in less then 6 months. hence you needing 5 different meds to combat the side effects of the main medication prescribed. the pharma industry doesnt care about the lawsuits they make billions a day and the insurance companies only pay a pittance of millions SOMETIMES.
also lets not forget the screwillionaires have a depopulation plan in place they need to get rid of 5-6 million people by 2015 . there are no more trials and experiments with the medications. also the doctors are no longer even taught about the medications uses from the scientist who invented them but by the sales personnel of the company spitting out the poison.
its why every few years they come out with new illinesses which need new medications which are designed to do nothing but make us sick and keep us that way. GOD how i wish i had known all of this information before when i first got diagnosed with cancer i would never have allowed them to poison me even further
ARE: “From what I have read, much of the research that the drug….”
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I had to do a search on just this topic within the last year and the only flaw in your statement is “much”, it’s way worse than either of us believed. Most basic research in chemical medicine is done on the governments dime and since it is research done ‘by the people’, on our dime, the fruits of that research are returned to the people by licencing agreements with big pharma. The licences are spread around so that all appropriate licencees get about an equal share of the pie over time. The overwhelming amount of research done by big pharma is in tweaking existing drugs for new licencing so that they can maintain their hold on a compound for trademark purposes. That keeps the basic drug out of the generic market.
GB, As to those give-back programs, those programs serve only one purpose and that purpose is to keep drug prices from being regulated. They are to medicine what the smoking cessation program/education money to states are, for the tobacco industry. And they are stingy and inadequate.
“The fact that people are going without medicine because they can’t afford it has very little to do with the pharma industry.”
Oh, please, who do you think you are talking to on this blawg? The only value/truth of that statement is that it allows blame to overlap insurance companies which is appropriate. it didn’t matter that both demons were brought to bear on my good friend when she was in need of very expensive medicine- she couldn’t afford it and the insurance company wouldn’t cover it. The fact that it was a cancer drug taken by millions (as opposed some orphan drug without an ongoing, widely prescribed user base) meant she didn’t get it because it was very, very expensive, not rare. It was way more expensive than it should have been and was so because it could be.
Big pharma is a monster, just like insurgence companies are. They are the death panels and they vote who lives and who dies (and how one dies) with % of profit per unit of treatment.
Thank you for this article. It gets more overwhelming by the day to just see the government take actions I do not support. Even more so its difficult to express my opinions without being labeled as ungrateful. People seem to think if you live in the US and have a better quality of living than anywhere else in the world you are a hypocrit or idiot for having a problem with the government. To me it’s as simple as not wanting to live in luxury at someone else’s expense.
This example of our government being more concerned about corporations as opposed to We The People, fuels the fire in my heart. I almost lost my brother in Afghanistan and it makes me sick to think it would have been under the cover of a lie and really about profit. It makes me sick to learn of all the distressed and suicidal soldiers returning home. It’s difficult to know where to begin but thanks to your website I can stayed informed “and knowing is half the battle”, plus the links to get involved make all the difference. Going to support Doctors Without Borders right now. Thank you. The United States of America is home and has made some of the most incredible individuals and advancements the world has ever seen, but there are always wolves trying to prey on the sheep. Thank God, yes the same “in God we trust” on our currency that we have sheep dogs like you Johnathan Turley & friends, our brave soldiers, government officials who are not corrupt, and anyone else who can sense something just isn’t right.
Is there any doubt from here on out who President Obama works for? It certainly isn’t those needing affordable health care.
Gingerbaker,
Nice to hear from what appears to be an industry spokesperson.
In point of fact, the legislation expressly forbids price negotiation for best price. There is a reason the Canadian people get the same identical drugs in Canada than in the US for a lower price. I think it is more than outrageous when the FDA gets on its high horse and makes pronouncements about now knowing if the Canadian medications are “safe” because the FDA has not vetted them. I want the FDA to explain to me why a heart medicine, or any other medicine, that came from the same mixing vat, pressed on the same pill presses, and sold out of the same supplier would not be safe north of the border, but unsafe south of the border. Oh yes, there is that little matter of competition being allowed on one side and forbidden on the other.
Here is how it works, presented by a couple of slightly manic newshound brothers:
Reblogged this on Taking Back America.
Reblogged this on U.S. Constitutional Free Press.
Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
Obama To India: Block Production Of Low-Cost Generic Drugs . . . Or Else
Gene,
Chris Rock got it right!!
And never forget the wisdom summed up by Chris Rock as “The money isn’t in the cure. It’s in the medicine!”
The only thing free about the drug market is that the drug companies are free to rob and steal from people who need the drugs and after most of the drug research was supported by tax dollars.