News

That the insurance was cut. Ethics of private drug R&D aside researching costs resources, resources need to be reimbursed, and if you have a drug that heals a rare illness with one dose you sell very few doses. Another drug for another illness might cost as much to research, but you need a dose every month and there's millions upon millions of patients. Let's also assume that both drugs cost the same to produce, per dose. Which means that to cover total costs a single dose for the first drug might have to cost two millions, and the other 20ct.

The alternative to this is saying "You have a rare illness, tough luck, we won't research drugs for it it benefits too few people".

They’re pro-birth, not pro-life.

It’s your fault you exist, so thoughts and prayers is all they’ll give you.

The cost isn’t an issue in my mind,

How is it not?

Insurance companies exist because of these costs, they should have to cover any treatment that has significantly higher success rates, especially when the lack of coverage will result in death, or other life-long consequences.

Yes, they should. But unchecked costs are a big reason why health insurance is so awful right now. We shouldn't tolerate this price gouging by pharmaceutical companies.

And don't tell me it's all about R&D.

https://www.treatmentactiongroup.org/resources/tagline/tagline-fall-2018/pharma-lies-people-die-myth-busting-fact-sheet-on-medicine-development-and-pricing/

What legitimate reason would there be to price drug like that? Is that what the r&d cost to create it? Greed. Thats where 99.9% of cost issues end up for

The government doesn't work for us, they work for business. The laws just follow.

They're born now, they don't matter anymore. Inside the womb: the most precious in the world. Outside the womb: fuck you, scum.

making it rain at Trump's rally.

If we had bad faith laws the insurance CEOs wouldn't be able to buy as many yachts, so we don't have that sort of thing. Some states have laws against surprise out-of-network billing and that is seen as a miraculous blessing.

Canada: Where are your bad faith laws??

American corporations: We don't do that here meme

Bad faith laws? We don’t have anything like that in America.

The life of patients is such a joke to pharma companies that the one that distributes this drug (Novartis) thought it would be ethical to "donate" doses through a literal lottery system.

https://www.sma-europe.eu/news/avxs-101-zolgensma-to-be-made-available-globally-through-a-controversial-programme

I do that and my life still isn't worth anything to them

Your life will never mean ANYTHING to the rich

Maybe we shouldn't make healthcare decisions while keeping our eyes on the bottom line, wow

From https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/zolgensma-expensive-3552644/

Zolgensma is a one-time-only gene therapy treatment for children aged less than two years with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) that costs $2.1 million for the single treatment. The reason Zolgensma is so expensive is because that is the price Novartis has decided it is worth because it “dramatically transforms the lives of families affected by this devastating disease” and the claimed cost of bringing new drugs to market. But this price is not without controversy. For a start, the early development of Zolgensma was financed by the National Institutes of Health and several charities devoted to finding treatments for SMA, including many U.S. charities such as Sophia’s Cure, Cure SMA, Getty Owl Foundation, Fighting SMA, Jadon’s Hope Foundation, the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, and Miracle for Madison. Many of these charities use donations by patient families and friends to subsidize research and clinical trials into new medicines for SMA. The CEO of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, argues that gene therapies represent a medical breakthrough in the way that they offer hope of a cure for deadly genetic diseases with a single dose. In some cases, the alternative is a multi-dose treatment with incremental improvements. For example, an alternative to Zolgensma is Spinraza that is taken four times a year for life. The list price is $750,000 for the first year and then $350,000 per year after that, so about $4 million a decade. But how do they calculate the actual cost? Many companies use a value-based pricing model which calculates the cost based on how many years of life gained as well as taking into account the effectiveness of the drug. But this means putting a price on how much a life is worth, as well as ensuring the company makes a reasonable margin on their investment. Little is disclosed about the true cost of bringing a new drug to market, and Novartis didn’t develop Zolgensma but acquired it through the $8.7 billion purchase of US firm AveXis.

So there is no tangible reason why it's this expensive.

I have no fucking clue about this particular medicine, and Americans are getting an absolutely raw deal on healthcare

BUT

Non-greedy reasons that can raise the price of a drug:

1. manufacturing costs. Maybe the ingredients are expensive. Maybe the synthesis has a very low yield. Maybe storage is very expensive. Maybe storage is such a bitch the drug needs to be made on-demand. Maybe storage is straight-up impossible so the drug needs to be made on-site.

2. Low demand. If very few people need the drug, you can't spread out the cost of R&D or manufacture. Furthermore, it'll force you to use low-volume manufacturing methods, which will be more expensive. It might be so low volume that you literally just pay a chemist to synthesize the drug on a bench top, which could take weeks of labor, depending on the synthesis.

3. delivery mechanism. Suppose the drug itself is relatively cheap, but it needs to be delivered by a long-term release capsule implanted in your spleen. Suppose it needs to be delivered by IV drip continuously for a week. Suppose it needs to be taken under direct supervision for some reason.

Probably other shit, it's been a while since I studied where healthcare costs come from.

Edit: lol, sounds like the justification the pharma company is going with is "fuck you, is not a child's life worth everything you've got?"

As an Australian the only thing I envy about the US is the Mexican food there.

I assume it doesn't, and that includes R&D cost that can't be spread across a large number of other doses.

But then people who don't look like me will get healthcare 😱