How would you go about lowering the cost of presription drugs?

Question

While at th same time keeping competition for research and development?

prescription - My bad!

prescription - My bad!

Answer 1

Limit the research and developement proformed by the big drug companies, limit the roll of the FDA as it effects the cost of developing new drugs, and make sure they pass the savings on to the consumer

Answer 2

Three things:

1. Repeal the ban on reimportation. If the companies can afford to sell those drugs sell for enough less overseas, let's bring them back and pocket the savings. You may recall that one of the arguments for the Ban was that reimportation would expose consumers to inferior drugs. That one quietly disappeared when the Canadian Attorney General opened an investigation into whether American Companies were selling substandard drugs in Canada.

2. Let Medicare negotiate prices. The Free Market doesn't work if you tie the hands of buyers. Let the market determine prices and let the Taxpayer's agents use their purchasing clout to get the best deal.

3. Extend the patent periods to 30 years for orphan drugs and 20 years for drugs competing with existing therapies.
Nearly every orphan drug and actually new drug is developed by Universities under government grants anyway. So those drugs won't be affected. Virtually all research by pharmaceutical companies is directed to one of two things. One is reformulations, where the lab moves a couple of atoms around in the molecule to get a drug with identical properties, but a different chemical signature, so that a new patent can be obtained and the "new" drug can be advertised as the next big thing. The other is finding new applications for existing drugs. Two good examples are the anti-smoking drug Zyban, which is actually the Anti-depressant Wellbutrin is the same therapuetic dose and an anti-hypertensive that never sold well for that application, but was discovered to alleviate erectile disfunction and was renamed Viagra.

To compensate for the longer patents FDA would have to change it's approval process, which requires that a drug be relatively safe and more effective than a sugar pill. Instead, we could require that a drug be superior to drugs already in use for that application. "Superior" could mean any of a number of things. The drug could be more effective, cause fewer side effects and interactions, it could even--God forbid, be cheaper. This also ends the great moral dilemna of drug testing. Control subjects would be getting real medicines instead of a useless placebo. In fact, controls could be established by examining existing case files at a savings to the researchers.

Less profitable for the drug companies in the short run, but profitable for the Nation as a whole, which means the Drug companies would get their share down the line.

Answer 3

If the producer of a specific drug could keep a patent longer, the price of drugs would fall considerably. Imagine the cost that goes into research and development and the additional costs of getting the word out to people in the medical field. It all adds up. The initial price of a drug is high because the patent runs out soon and is mimicked by others who haven't expended the time, money or the initial research to develop it.

If the drug companies knew that they would get a fair return for their efforts, that would cut down costs immediately. That's just one of many examples.

I would like to add that the government needs to stay out of it.

Answer 4

The pharmaceutical companies are making tons of money off the American market. Charging exorbitant prices to the American market (they dramatically decrease their prices in other markets, even in industrial national markets) is not really for keeping up with competitve research.... they can charge far less to Americans but why should they? They have one of the strongest lobbies in Washington (such a lobby could not exist in the UK or Canada, for example... they just don't give lobbyists that much power). So I would start with attacking the political lobbies... this would in turn take away the unnecessary television ads for prescriptions... the bonuses could be curbed for pharmaceutical reps but that is the company's decision (I would not interfere with that).

There are great things about the American pharmaceutical companies but their greed should be addressed if you want to do something about this.

Answer 5

Legalize recreational drugs with the stipulation that it's revenue is used to fund research and development, and require federal oversight in prescription drug prices.

Answer 6

Put prescriptions on a national health plan and make the drug companies bid on a group rate to purchase the drugs.

Answer 7

Well, as I see it, the drug companies need to make money so that they can continue to make new drugs to tackle new diseases but don't need to make boatloads on it. Pay for rights to the formulary for expensive medications and get companies to make them as cheaply as possible as generics.

Also, actively look into wholistic and herbal remedies and incorporate them where possible. These are usually cheaper and have less side effects than the perscription drugs.

Answer 8

I suppose you could extend patents - that would allow a company to recoup more of it's R&D expenses while selling the drug for a lower unit price, since they'd have exclusive rights to it for a longer period.

You could, of course, provide subsidies, though that's very expensive 'corporate welfare.'

Answer 9

Make FDA approval worth a crap. If a drug gets FDA approval (already a very expensive process) then a manufacturer can not be sued for punitive damages for that drug unless it is proved the company defrauded the FDA in the approval process or had a manufacturing error.

Answer 10

Government funded research. Take the price of research out of the drugs, and add them to taxes. And what isn't used in that, you'll get back in your returns anyways.