The drug companies sell out
Photoshop: The People’s Cube
The drug companies have cut a deal with President Obama to help fund his government health care takeover.
In other words: They are subsidizing their own demise.
I have no sympathy for industries willing to collaborate with their own worst enemies.
Don’t come crying when Obama limits your salaries, fires your CEOs, and interferes with your ability to innovate and make profits.
You deserve what you get:
President Barack Obama says the pharmaceutical industry’s agreement to help close a gap in Medicare’s drug coverage will make health care overhaul more possible.
Drug companies have pledged to spend $80 billion over the next decade to help reduce the cost of drugs for seniors and pay for a portion of Obama’s proposed revamping of health care. The deal was struck with Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, as well as the White House.
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It won’t be enough. $80 billion – try a trillion or two.
You’d think these people would have paid attention to what happened to banks and car companies that got into bed with the Obama administration.
Hell, even the more cognizant among those who voted for Obama are waking up to the fact this guy’s trouble. And his approval ratings, according to Rasmussen, are continuing their steady downward trek.
I have no sympathy for them. Just the people who won’t be able to get necessary medication when the government deems it financially irresponsible for grandma to get those cancer meds. She’s 80, after all, hasn’t she led a good enough life?
They obviuosly haven’t read “Atlas Shrugged.” For them it’s “Atlas Left a Tinkle-Puddle on the Floor.” They think they can cut a deal, but next year they’ll still be smeared as public enemy no. 1, and the same for the next year afterward, and so on, until they don’t exist.
They didn’t learn the lessons of General Motors.
*Exasperated Sigh*
See the story in June Self magazine about Bad Medicine….They are already making Crap they call genrics and they are making people sick. Never mind importing drugs from manufacturing that has no oversight and filled with more crap. Heparin among others is killing people . But as long as it increases their profits then all is “well”
Which companies/organizations? This sounds vague and more than a little suspicious. Someone needs to do some digging here. (Major Hint) And correct me if I’m wrong, but 80 Bil is chump change for these guys.
I just hope they don’t screw up my ability to get my $4.00 prescriptions at Walmart.
See how cleverly they word it?
By putting the ‘reduce the cost of drugs for seniors’ first, they get you to think that is what is actually going to happen.
What they don’t tell you is that, more than likely, they’ll spend a hundred bucks on lowering drug costs & the rest goes to helping the Teleprompter Reader get his way.
Over the passed years, the drug companies have had to remove many new drugs from the market because of the side effects causing more harm than good. How many of our elderly are over medicated? How much money is wasted on drugs which are not really needed? When medical insurance pays the costs, many don’t even question filling the Rx and happily take the pills. I’m not sure who gets the worst end of this deal, the gov, drug companies or the taxpayers.
You’re assuming the drug companies went along willingly. Who knows what kind of arm-twisting went on in the back room?
What we know and expect from our medical care today might be the pinnacle of this field. Doubt much innovation will occur once this becomes socialized. We might accept this stagnation when it comes to managing diabetes, heart disease, cancer….but it will be different to accept this future about infectious entities. We have drugs to treat bacteria, parasites, and even viruses now. However living creatures evolve and eventually these drugs will become useless. Surviving during the pre-antibiotic era was much more difficult. An epidemic in 10-20 years, might run the same course set the black plague centuries ago.
God luck with that. I work in the pharmaceutical industry and these cuts have come in the form of people losing their jobs. But it’s for the greater good so who cares, right?
Let it remain so … please.
I am afraid that in the age of fascist economics, the only rational thing for businesses to do is leave the US or cut a deal.
Standing on principle is a person thing, not an organization thing.
Plus, the Faustian bargain that is fascism has always been attractive to big businesses that are not committed to market capitalism…a distinct minority, as Adam Smith knew over two centuries ago.
MBuck, I suspect that some were promised a pie in the sky and believed in it; much like the public that voted for obama. When they start to regret, a lot of damage will have occured. Amazing how quickly people forget.
i.e., they will stop making them.
True.
After all, Obama won, so who needs debate or civility? Send a few ACORN thugs in to set things to rights.
What idiots.
I’m thinking crazy like freakn’ foxes. If these guys made a deal with the devil, you can bet there’s megabucks in it for them.
Why can’t we go back to the good old days when the White House worked with drug companies to help them make money?
Cowards always make deals with tyrants thinking they will somehow be spared. And it never works out that way in the end. Yep, one bill closer to the tipping point folks.
lgm said…
Nothing.
lgm, do you get paid? Slimy capitalist batsturd…
It’s such a travesty that you still have posting privileges….
lgm: And the funding for the research for the next cancer drug will come from????? But seriously, the drug companies will keep thier profits. You wait and see. They would not have made this deal unless they made up the loss somewhere else. My first guess would be the free drug programs. Why would they need them if uncle sugar pays for everyones drugs?? Or aid to forgien charaties. Probably also R&D, and employee layoffs.
The 80 billion will be made up somehow.
lgm – don’t worry….
there’s plenty of industry insiders and lobbyists in Obama’s administration to more than make up for your concerns….
Despite his pledge to ‘change’ Washington…
The Companies will HAVE to recop this money from somewhere else… meaning…
Cheep drugs for government programs will be subsidised by more expensive drugs for those who pay their own insurance…
IE, private will pay for Public…
Just part of the Takeover.
“….the drug companies have had to remove many new drugs from the market because of the side effects causing more harm than good.”
I would bet the ones that stay available vastly outnumber the ones that are pulled. Peanut butter kills because some people are allergic and experiance a “side effect” from it. Time to pull it from the shelves! If a drug is used by a million consumers and a dozen die from a potential but remotely possible side effect, I do not consider that to be excessive
You can’t expect courage from a corporate board. They have duties to stockholders, and they have to deal rationally with the reality the political process gives them.
We, the electorate, have the duty to provide them a different reality. The choice is between fascism and liberty, expressed as market capitalism.
This is on us, and up to us to change.
These are the good old days.
Clue to lgm. Come in.
Agree, Rags. These fools running the drug companies that go along with anything controlled by the government are setting up their own firing squad.
Rationing, lower quality and less innovation are coming soon to a medical facility near you.
aloha guy; they won’t stop making them, they will just stop producing them here and developing the future drugs here. the cost is in development, and they will turn that over to colleges, and then buy the patent rights and produce the drug in some 3rd world toilet where a days wage is $5. now they can afford to spend 80 billion, which is still a hell of a lot of money in my book.
Oh good grief … goverment pharmacies.
“It’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall” …
Where to get the 80 billion.
-Cut all free drug programs and services.
-Lay off workers.
-Rasie prices.
-Cut R & D.
-Outsource.
I am sure you can all add more.
Pharmaceutical companies give rather large amounts of drugs away in third world countries, especially in Africa. My guess that is gone.
lgm said:
You mean like P.I.A.P.S. going short on Big Pharma companies and then introducing her Medical plan for the country and lambasting Big Pharma which in turn drove the price of their stock down and she made a mint?
Look up Fascism in the Dictionary and tell me what Barry Soetoro is doing is any different.
The companies joining in are just guaranteeing their place at the table of the “one”.
Yeah, because heaven forbid drug companies make money and put a lot of it back into research. Gasp! The horror!
I love how liberals always whine about other people “making money”, but when it’s their bank accounts benefiting, it’s suddenly not a problem.
rusty armor,
Yep. Government pharmacies. Why not? We’re gonna have government insurance. Soon to follow: Government hospitals.
Oh yay.
Yay us.
Go team.
What this usually means is that we’ll raise the price so we can pay some of the cost. Obama wins, the drug companies win, we’re scrwd.
By Pharma
In the good old days, Republicans always worked with big pharma to protect monopoly pricing.
Some say that Obama governs as a Fascist. If he were doing that, there would have been cracked heads rather than spilled tea at tea parties, Iran style.
I wonder if bho has the same view on the drug companies as he did with the doctors on lawyers suing them? A great cost to doctors and drug companies is insurance due to suits. Actually, in our country most companies elevate their costs due to lawyers and juries who want to ‘sock it to the rich’.
L
englishqueen, my Democrat mother is 80, and recently received a hip replacement. As I told her, if her president gets his way, she’d better not break the other one, as she won’t get another new one!
So, you oppose patent law now, too?
How about copyright? Trademarks?
Any form of someone’s life and work you don’t consider your property?
And, it isn’t a matter of question. Obama IS A FASCIST. Head-cracking is not part of the basic formula….
just an inevitable consequence when people refuse to be collectivized.
But, here, it will go both ways.
lgm
If you think big pharma cut a deal with Dear Leader for altruistic reasons, you are in lala land. They are seeking to broaden their already massive market. Government funded meds. Bottom line.
I’m actually shocked. Oh well, looks like my aunt may not have to go through with her planned suicide in a few years after all.
You dolt. It isn’t about Rep v Dem. It’s government versus freedom.
By using the government’s deep pockets to stifle competition, subsidizing medicine costs in socialist systems at our expense, and driving costs ever-skyward, the government has done nothing but slow down research and drive up costs.
If the tea-partiers had been brave enough to show up without permits, that’s exactly what would have happened. Surely you remember the Oregon WTO chaos.
And Obama’s brown shirted thugs did show up in the New York Senate chambers.
Sure, but we aren’t quite there yet.
BTW LGM what do you think the drug companies will cut to cover these costs?
I nominate this for the stupidest post of the day. Any seconds???
Just scroll by – it’s impossible to tell whether the commenter in question is legit or not, so the non sequitur equivocations and straw man distractions that permeate each of his arguments aren’t worth the investment of building a refutation.
DBNinKY said:
That was a great way of putting it. Me i would have said, Posts by LGM and his ilk make about as much sence and have about as much of an affect as a fart in a wind storm.
I second that, and my Golden Retriever volunteers to take on the forensic challenge to the poster. (I think it is over-kill, but hey…)
sonofdy said (#45):
Maybe they’ll have to cut back on lobbying?
Is it possible these companies acquiesced to preserve their drug patents?
I’ve always thought that one of the reasons why prescription drugs are so expensive is because the pharmaceutical companies’ patents are so short-term.
With obama in office???
Not bloody likely. Try again.
Stupid, lobbying has exploded since THE ONE took office.
Why?
Because instead of market competitors we are converting people into supplicants.
Free men are not supplicants, BTW.
Or they’ll just cut back on research. Either way, no big loss. Obama will cure us all with a wave of his benevolent, blessed hand, right?
lgm, you’re definitely not smart enough to properly analyze this situation.
BTW, has anyone seen the language of this agreement? Isn’t it possible that the $80B can be spent on R&D projects which were already planned and budgeted? In other words, isn’t it possible that Obama simply asked the pharmas to pledge to keep those projects? On one hand, such a move would make the public (and Congress) think that pharma is endorsing ObamaCare. On the other hand, pharmas would think that they’re getting off easy (for now).
Big Pharma has been spending a lot of money on marketing. You know, those multiple page ads which first tout the benefits of their product, then give pages of side effects in fine print. These ad campaigns should be cut back, with marketing only to doctors and other health care providers.
Why? I thought you claimed that the tea parties were small and insignificant.
80 billion worth??? Doubtfull.
Don’t forget, the money he is referring to comes directly from the taxpayers’ pockets. Senior prescription entitlements cost us billions annually. They are trying to figure out how to make these drugs cheaper.
The drug companies’ biggest expense is in marketing. Ever since the FDA allowed them to market directly to consumers, advertising budgets skyrocketed. R&D costs a fraction of what they spend on markteting, and a lot of the advertising budget goes towards selling “lifestyle” drugs like Vi@gra and birth control, and the profits from these in turn fuel R&D and new patents.
Bottom line is, it doesn’t make sense for them to cut one budget or the other. They will make a balance of cuts across the board in order to maintain profit margins while making “entitled” drugs cheaper.
Oh, say, that is brilliant.
Let’s stifle both free speech, and the spread of information, concentrating it in a population of elites who will decide what we consume for us!
What a wonderful collectivist plan!
There’s nothing wrong with pull marketing for drugs.
Or they could just cut the free drug program. The government will be doing that anyway.
Put up the numbers.
Really? I can think of one thing wrong with it. Who makes that decision, and where do they get any right to make it?
He probably had a gun to their heads.
In light of some of the crap that THE ONE has claimed, but later turned out to have been exaggerated or an outright lie, I think maybe we need to give this a day or two to mature. Could be we are being premature.
Blitz marketing has to occur because the drug company involved has but a short time to make money on the patent – money that helps fund R-D and other innovations – once a drug goes generic, that’s it.
Extend the runs of their patents, and the pharma companies will cut their marketing budgets.
So, ultimately, is there any company that can make a profit and do with that money what it wants? And how do you know this – do you have insider information as to what drug companies will and won’t cut?
Just like liberals, who never cut wasteful spending or unnecessary make-work jobs from grossly inflated government jobs but go after essentials to punish people, you expect the drug companies to show the restraint your political masters won’t?
And why does this contempt for spending vs. budgets exempt families? Basically, profit is income less expenses, so if Family Y has more money left over at the end of the month than Family X, isn’t that unfair, too? Shouldn’t Family Y have to make cuts across the board in order to be equal to Family X?
That’s a laugh. The government makes those purchases because the government wants to make those purchases. That’s why it comes directly from taxpayers’ pockets.
Who makes what decision?
sonofdy said (#52):
Lobbying has gone down.
corkie said (#57):
They were.
So there was no need to crack heads.
O/T but making my blood boil.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/22/us-will-not-engage-taliban-near-housing/
AAARRRGGGHHHHH
Thanks for the pseudo intellectual comedy today lgm, ol buddy. I needed a laugh.
Dear Leader has lobyists on his staff. Most transparent government evah!
Liar.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/03/lobbyists-thriv.html
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23872.html
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/567nydlh.asp
“For example, in an accounting study based on the annual reports of ten of the largest global pharmaceutical firms, Lauzon and Hasbani showed that between 1996 and 2005, these firms globally spent a total of US$739 billion on “marketing and administration.” In comparison, these same firms spent US$699 billion in manufacturing costs, US$288 billion in R&D, and had a net investment in property and equipment of US$43 billion, while receiving US$558 billion in profits”
source
As far as I know, the drug companies are doing this voluntarily. I’m guessing you think they are being strong-armed into it. I do not profess to know either way, I’m just trying to make sense of how this will pan out.
It’s not insider information, just what makes sense. Whatever they decide to do, they need to maintain a profitable balance between research, manufacturing, and marketing. It doesn’t make sense to cut exclusively from R&D when patents ultimately drive profits; nor does it make sense to cut exclusively from marketing directly to consumers since they make so much money off of lifestyle drugs, and those profits drive new patent development. But I honestly do not know where the cuts will be made, this is just my guess. As others have said, they could just as easily cut free drug programs, which makes sense, too.
US$739 billion on marketing and administration
US$288 billion in R&D
Globally?!?!?!
Sorry, that is bogus. What the hell is the “administration” component?
Well, the one bright spot is that after the drug companies are nationalized I won’t have to listen to all those idiotic Ci@lis, L3vitra, Vi@gra ads on TV at 8:00 PM any more. It was so much fun when my 6 year old asked me what “ED” was…
Of course, since they converted TV to digital I don’t get reception. And of course I’ll be euthanized pretty quickly since I didn’t vote for Obama and am a member of the NRA so I guess it won’t matter much after all.
Odd but the message filters block the three names of those drugs…
I wonder if Obama is already starting to turn the thumbscrews on Michelle! It was only a matter of time.
He was the talking horse, right…???
I only wish. Why do companies run those kind of ads in “prime time?”
Some good thoughts there. But I’m still trying to figure out which “drug companies” and/or organization(s) made this deal. Sounds suspiciously vague to me. Who supposedly negotiates for all drug companies.
Also, I suspect that the deal entails government funding for meds, increasing demand and sales for the companies.
Just the top ten companies in the US do over $300B/year in sales. So $80B over ten years is chump change, especially if they are negotiating for federal funding for meds to uninsured patients.
I dunno, War. I think it has to do with the general coarsening of our culture.
This is EXACTALY what is wrong with our country. We have teachers with a third grade reading comprehension teaching our yoots.
I wonder if the FDA will initiate a ban on marketing those three drugs to children?
My homeschooled third grader resents that comment. But then again she is really only a first-grader reading at a third-grade level…
So, it is safe to say your first-grader understands the link lgm gave? Sadly, lgm looks to be 50, is a teacher and cannot read.
In any case, I apologize to all third-graders here. We are glad you are here as we know your are smart enough to stay away from DKOS and HuffPo.
What can you say about a collectivist who posts an aspirational article from BEFORE THE ONE took office, and isn’t aware of the facts that…like so much else…THE ONE talks about doing stuff, and then does the opposite the next day.
A serf for the LYIN’ KING…????
Nah he just doesn’t bother to read them. The other day he spent hours defending a link that said the exact opposite of what he claimed it did.
Amusing.
Anybody seen the stock market today.
UUUUUgly.
huggybear, you fell flat on your face.
As Raspierre says, you need to break the A out of their SGA.
Thank you for being honest.
You would expect big business to be the first to champion capitalism over socialism. But, as we sadly see with drug companies, big tobacco, car companies, mega banks, and even GE, few of these aging giant corporations are reluctant to get in bed with government. They fear competition from efficient private upstarts more than they fear government control. The reason:
Big business + government = protection from competition = virtual monopoly.
Seriously, would you let your third grader click on a link provided by lgm?
And for the record, lgm cannot think.
This is dark. But totally predictable and predicted.
BTW, War, I always follow lgm citations. They are so rare, and so far universally useful for proving him a liar. How can I resist?
And that is okay with me but you are not a third grader…
Congratulations to Ragspierre (#75), who actually posted links that seem at first glance to support his contention that lobbying activity has increased recently.
Of the three links, only one has actual numbers. The last one is a joke — MM style speculation and paranoia that “rings true”. The first one has numbers that come from a right wing think tank disguised as an ethics group. Everyone agrees that new lobbying rules make lobbying less effective than in the good old days of Republican control. They also agree that the impetus for hiring lobbyists is the important issues being discussed. There was no need to lobby against global warming measures under Bush. Drug companies also were on easy street.
Another lie.
I invite the readers to read my links, and judge what they say themselves.
I also invite everyone here to use their logic and common sense to answer this: “Will you increase lobbying in Washington DC when you create a $700,000,000,000,000,000 slush fund, and suspend the laws of market capitalism in favor of fascism?”
HINT: Duh.
The links, again:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/03/lobbyists-thriv.html
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23872.html
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/567nydlh.asp
Research this for yourselves. Lemme know what you find.
Nope: “promotional spending in the US”
This is actually the whole point of the article, hence the scare-quotes around “marketing and administration,” which is how the companies themselves report promotional expenses.
Two firms (IMS and CAM) utilize data queried from various sources to arrive at an independent estimate of these expenditures (my bad, I quoted the analysis based on industry reports, rather than the independent analysis, which separates out marketing and admin. However the net result is not far off).
The author merges the IMS and CAM data to arrive at a better estimate of marketing expenditures (that is, utilizing sources independent of the industry, and without the “and administration” part):
Using the IMS and CAM data (both of which detail promotional expenditures, as opposed to the annual report data, which lumps marketing w/ admin), he determines that
One caveat: the author is Canadian. French-Canadian. Make of that what you will.