The New War Over Generic Drugs

Big pharma wants to keep the outrageous profits rolling in and the million dollar salaries of their CEOs and their lobbyists guarantees it! Without senators like Warren and their threats to limit drug prices we would probably have $100 aspirin

This post raises a number issues. It's hard to know where to begin or where to end.

The problem is very real and very burdensome to the public and to the payers (the government, for Medicare and Medicaid, the insurance companies for other people, and the public).

Eisenhower warned to "beware of the military-industrial complex." Setting aside that we didn't take his advice, and the Pentagon is our biggest expense, he may not have realized the destructive effect of the "medical-industrial complex," which is our second biggest expense. And it's largely phony and inflated, for reasons too wide-ranging to get into here.

But it is most certainly true, as this post mentions, that most medications are developed using public money. And they're then overpriced by the fabricators, and overused by a collusion of doctors and patients (and the drug industry, which extends itself to reduce everything to a situation that needs medications, and generally only medications, to address problems of many, most, or all kinds.

"Funny enough," brand name fabricators complain about generics, many of which they themselves fabricate, and medications from places like Canada, many of which they also fabricate. And their warning is that medications from generic or Canadian suppliers might not be safe.

Maybe the most important bottom line is that it has become clear and commonly accepted what's wrong with Communist-run systems, but non-Communist systems, and especially the US, don't want to admit what's wrong with Capitalist-run systems. They don't call them Capitalist for nothing. They're about one thing: capital. That leaves a lot of room for a lot of very bad behavior.

Fred

Some years back, there was talk of setting up a nonprofit company to manufacture generics. Whatever became of that?

The irony and great injustice is that almost ALL the money paid and made is from the Taxpayer/User/Buyer i.e Taxpayers fund the basic Drug research , Pharmacy Managers negotiate rebates on Drug prices and profit from them whilst not paying a dime for those Drugs which is paid for by the patient/user.

NOW...even the generic Drug makers want to make EXTRA profit from wanting to raise the price of drugs they can produce now easily and cheaply as they are off Patent.

Basically...ALL involved are making a lot of money out of the people who have completely funded almost every aspect of a drugs existence and manufacture as well as the huge profits being made by others , all along the way.

All done without their own money on the table ...just the taxpayers.