Thursday, January 26, 2006

NOT about R or D

yeah yeah, i know. i am NY and should be out playing, not writing you all. unfortunately, i do still have to ice my ankle to keep it in check so i am stuck for a few in the hotel room.

so.

you know how drugs companies like to say over and again that drugs are expensive because they have to pass on all the expense they incur on R&D?

well, for the eight people in the world who actually believe that hooey, here is your first lesson in Pharmacia 101:

We were informed today by our drug rep that a new company has purchased drug rights to Cosmogen and Mustargen. The new company is Ovation Pharmaceuticals- phone number is 847-282-1000 and the contact person is Barbara Jackson.
They have implemented a HUGE price increase which will price out all my current rescue lymphoma patients.
New prices for Cosmogen 0.5 mg vial- $513.75 from < $30.00 vial,
Mustargen $589 from $69 for a 10 mg vial.
Ms. Jackson was unable to allow my veterinary patients to be classified as indigent and at this time will not discuss compassoniate usage for veterinarians.
Please contact Ovation Pharmaceutical and request help for our patients.


these are drugs that were already developed and on the market, drugs that had already recovered their expense. drugs that were saving lives. Ovation cannot claim to be recooping expenses for R&D on these drugs and should not morally or legally be allowed to raise prices 800-1700%, condemning animals (and probably some humans) to death from their price-gouging.

shockingly, this behavior is allowed to continue. could it have something to do with the fact that the same lawmakers who sold out Medicare to the drug lobbyists remain in Washington, policing pharmacy companies?

2 comments:

ab said...

truly a sad situation. the last pie chart I saw that broke up Big Pharma costs put R&D at less then 10% while the largest portion (over 60% in some cases) went to promotion.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure what's sadder:
That the united states is the ONLY western democracy that has no National Medical Plan
or
That the citizens in the United Staes continue to believe that being fu$#ed over by big businesss is the price you have to pay for a free market economy.