Big Pharma is using faux generics to keep drug prices high, critics say

They also have a patent on Descovy, but Descovy is not on the market for PrEP.

Right now, a month's supply of Truvada costs $1800. Six months ago, it cost $1400.

Truvada has a considerable amount of damaging side-effects that prevent many people from taking the medication, and cause harm to those who do take it. Truvada is hard on the kidneys, so much so that patients have their kidney screened every 3 months while taking the drug. Truvada is also hard on people's bones. Brittleness and fractures can happen. The medication can and has damaged people's bodies.

Descovy isn't without side-effects, but the drug doesn't harm the kidneys and bones as much as Truvada.

However, the patent for Truvada doesn't expire until 2020. Gilead has been dragging its feet for years when it comes to introducing Descovy for PrEP. A lawsuit alleges that Gilead is purposely timing their introduction of Descovy for PrEP to line up with Truvada's patent expiration[1].

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/mass-tort-alleges-...

Along the same lines, why invent a cure, when you could instead invent a lifelong treatment?

That is not true. For one, the FDA has little influence on the degree of difficulty in building and approving new hospitals. You'll note too that one of the problems is that existing medical facilities are disappearing from poorer and rural areas.

For another, the "shortage of residencies and medical school intake restrictions" is due to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which "capped the number of residency slots the federal government would fund ... The shortfall-what is not covered by the Federal government-is paid for by the hospitals where residents train. While it is possible to increase the number of residents they train, to do so, hospitals must fund the entire cost of those training positions." - https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/266610-sh... . The FDA has nothing to do with that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

I see this argument a lot, but most people don't realise the amount of research, work and vast amounts of money that goes into turning an academic finding into an effective drug on the market. Identifying a cellular pathway involved in a disease, or even going as far as presenting a hit compound that targets that pathway in a paper is such a small step towards a useful drug. There are hundreds of things that are yet to be considered and any one of them could result in the entire project being scrapped, and that is of course assuming the work published by academia can actually be replicated.

Preemptively, I’ll take on the other talking point: “Me too” drugs are actually important. All meds come with side effects, either from the active ingredients or the inactive ingredients. Having options allows patients to choose something that works for them. Multiple treatments also means competition and lower costs.

So maintaining the current system without patents seems difficult. But an option would of course be to shift the system - public investment for research and promising trials and then the result is free to use (or protected only for a short period).

People doing groundbreaking work are motivated to do the work for whatever reason, and it's seldom money. There are more important things to them, whether it's simply doing Good, or status, or it fascinates them, or whatever. The guy who invented insulin sold the patent for a dollar.

New drugs and therapies are often developed outside these big companies anyway, and they just buy them, run them through the certification, and then sell them at incredible markup. The money's not in development, it's in the business side of things.

We've (some of us, at least) so bought into the argument that the world needs to be this way that we totally ignore these things actually get done.

Since "The first modern epinephrine autoinjector, the EpiPen, was invented in the mid-1970s at Survival Technology in Bethesda, Maryland by Sheldon Kaplan[10][11] and was first approved for marketing by the FDA in 1987", at least those patents have expired.

And this article is, after all, talking about generics - authorized generics, certainly, but still generics.

However, you are right - the "Epipen" is a trademark for an epinephrine autoinjector. As such, it can be applied to many things, eg, "Sudafed" packages might not contain pseudoephedrine as they once all did.

I'm just asking for recognition that although most people would pay an amount that would bankrupt them for a single dose of a lifesaving drug, doesn't mean that you should routinely charge that much.

Profit margins work when it's consumer goods. For example:

Scenario #1: Sell 10 TVs at $1,000 each. Profit=$10,000.

Scenario #2: Sell 20 TVs at $100 each. Profit=$2,000.

I don't care how many people have TVs, so I'm happy for you to choose scenario #1. However, if instead of TVs, it was a lifesaving drug, Scenario #1 is a huge tragedy, where 10 people die in the process.

Repeat, there must be a happy medium between pure charity and price gouging.

Tired of the false dichotomy of wild-west anything-goes or heavy government control. We could have a functioning market and also punish bad actors, if it was considered a possibility.

And I am not Russian.