It’s inevetable. The cost of your medication is bound to go up and up. Mostly in the name of advertising and “research and development”.
What does this mean for the average person? Let’s face it. Medications are overpriced. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Is Niaspan really worth it’s suggested cost of nearly $100 per month…or can you just get a similar effect by taking over-the-counter slow-release niacin for a fraction of the cost? Or is Lovaza really worth it’s hefty price tag in comparison to over-the-counter fish oil capsules?
Think about it. The pharmaceutical choices we have for patients are nothing more than drugs categorized into broad “classes” of medications used to treat various disease processes. For instance, there are at least 4 different statin drugs out on the market to treat your cholesterol. Why do we even need this many? Is it because everyone is different, therefore, we should have a variety of drugs in a “class” to choose from in order to “customize” our treatments for individual people?
The answer to that question is an emphatic “NO”. We all know that in order to survive in the world of free-market capitalism you have to make a profit– a bottom line. With that in mind, you can see where this is all leading. One drug is developed as a pioneer of a “new class” of drugs and then other pharmaceutical drug companies add their own molecular side-chain to the basic molecular structure and then patent that molecule and call it “their own”. Thus, with the rights to that particular molecular structure, they can market it without much competition; that is, until their patent runs out and the molecular structure can then be copied; in essence, making the drug a “generic”.
What happens then? No significant profit can be made because other chemists and molecular biologists can mass produce the molecule in their own laboratories. With so many chemists getting in on the mass duplication, competition can now occur from many labs, thus, driving down the cost of the molecule or drug significantly.
Think about it. With all the “pomp and circumstance” of our major “blockbuster” drugs out there on the market, many of them are not really new or “novel” ideas. A lot of them are either enantiomers, isomers, Levo- or Dextro- configurations of one another. In essence, they are “copy-cats” of one another, each with their own chemically distinct and subtle, might I add, differences.
This all leads me to one question. If we are coming out with only copy-cat drugs of one another, then are the research and development departments of these drug companies actually coming up with “new” ideas? Indeed, the drug might be marketed under a different name and sold to the public as “new”, but the creative ingenuity isn’t there. Why don’t research and development departments actually spend money and invest in novel new ideas and new classes of drugs, rather than just adding another drug to an already existing class of medication. In part, it is because of profit.
Unfortunately, this hurts patients–in their pockets and in terms of their health. When a patient can’t get a medication because the insurance company won’t cover it, the reason is primarily because of the cost. If pharmaceutical industry personnel claim their drug is really the “best on the market” then why do they make it nearly impossible for people to get it–i.e. why do they make their consumers go “bankrupt” in the process???
Never made sense to me. Never will.
