Are medications manufactured on this planet, or do they do that somewhere else?

Question

The reason I ask is because of the prices, the way I figured was I can see a price of $150 a pill for heart medication if we have to import it from one of the moons of Jupiter.

The reason I bring this up is because I met a human last night who just got out of the hospital from a bypass surgery. This was an average hard working human whose insurance from the employer had been switched and all benefits where on hold, only temporarily. However, there was no coverage at present, just a promise of re-imbursement. So, there was some heart medications, one called nitro something that is relatively cheap so he as able to fill it, but the more vital medication was $150 a pill, and impossible to finance. So basically if you do not have coverage, you are F****d! I have multiple experiences to confirm this, and there are millions more out there.

What has happened is the insurance companies have figured out a percentage of profit that they intend to maintain. The pharmaceutical companies have figured out that if they raise the prices the insurance industry responds accordingly with rates to compensate. With most of the pharmaceutical profits coming from the sales of medications covered by insurance, the free market becomes somewhat of a consortium, not quite a monopoly, but almost. The pharmaceutical companies know that they can set prices indiscriminately and throw medical gorgon public relations and research data to account for costs (I can make a $10,000 research data file in about an hour, any way you want it formatted), they claim they are passing on research costs when they are actually just increasing the profits. You can clearly see this in the way the stock prices go up, and up, they do that because they are making money, otherwise it would stay the same.

The insurance companies are like the middle man in the whole thing. They are happy to sit back and suck their 35% off of the medical industry, denying medical care out of one side of their mouths while preaching the benefits out of the other.

Basically, what needs to be done is medical care has to be provided to everyone equally, there is no other way to do it. We need national medical insurance and we need it now. A true insurance company would charge only what it needed and give the rest back equally to the participants. It has to operate like a non-profit with no profit in order to achieve the intention.

The pharmaceutical companies need to be scrutinized and open to public viewing of all records of expenses incurred in the development of a new medication. They need to also operate more like non-profit and get back to making medicine for the purpose of healing people, not to satisfy a marketing campaign.

What a pain in the neck….

Not to mention these are both powerfull lobbies that influence thier own regulation. Wish I could regulate my own industry but congress is supposed to that for me.

Answer 1

I searched and searched your post for an actual, serious question but failed to find one. I appreciate your rant, and agree with you across the board, but lets please remember this is a question/answer site.

Answer 2

What a lot of people forget about the drug companies is the money they have spend on research and lawsuits. A drug make take 10 years or more to develop and test. The drug companies spend millions and millions on them. When the drug is released, there is an expectation of it returning a profit (at the very least pay the company back for what it spent).

New drugs are being developed today that will provide wonderful benefits next decade. Where does the money come from to pay for this research. Current drug sales.

Lawsuits are another big area of concern. Some of the blame for this can be laid on the company for not doing proper research and some can be blamed on a rather litigious society.

All, in all, it is not as simple as some people believe. The company is not making $149 profit on a $150 pill. If it were, then buy stock in that company.

Answer 3

Drugs are typically only expensive when they are still under patent, meaning they were only introduced into the market a few years ago. (Patents expire after 20 years, and for a drug that first decade is mostly spent in pre-market testing & FDA approval).

So the question you should ask is, how come someone has to rely on that one evil drug company's one product to be alive? How come none of the world's charities or socialist governments created a drug he could use?

And, since the patient would evidently be dead now if this had happened to him more than 10 years ago (the drug not being available), is he thankful that a bunch of brilliant total strangers at some drug company worked 14 hours a day for years to produce a drug so that he doesn't die? Is he appreciative of that do you think?

Answer 4

Jeesh, couldn't you have just posted your frustration on a forum or blog?
This was not a question!

Now I need some medication ~