Crisis Looms in Antibiotics as Drug Makers Go Bankrupt | Hacker News Reader

Crisis Looms in Antibiotics as Drug Makers Go Bankrupt

nytimes.com

10 pointsHarryHirsch4 comments

> The problem is straightforward: The companies that have invested billions to develop the drugs have not found a way to make money selling them

I call BS. I would like to see the subsidised govment sponsored investment that was made for the research. I don't have a recent study but in 2009 is was found apprix 1/3 of investment was federal funded.

2017 ~50% EDIT : https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/data-check-us-govern...

With the cost of pharma in the US, the larger companies just pillaging insurance companies, it's no surprise that smaller companies just get trashed.

But that's not because of the R&D costs so don't try sell that nonsense.

But hey, once any pharma company can complain about not being able to stay afloat, in-come medicare because the antibiotics are considered required by the WHO, and then wow, the price to then suddenly sky rocket. At the cost of the Tax Payer.

Pharma companies are both some of the greatest, noble and at the same time, others in the industry are the most disgusting people in the world.

Even if government subsidizes are half of all r&d, that doesn't mean it isn't one of the largest costs for these companies. Additionally, I'd wager the biggest pharma companies are getting the lionshare of the subsidies.

And if it isn't r&d spend what else is it? Marketing costs aren't nearly as front loaded as r&d. In other words, if marketing isn't paying off, you can cut back. If r&d isn't, you already spent it and you are in trouble.

Pharma companies aren’t pillage insurance, Its the exact opposite. The pharmacy benefits managers are negotiating higher list prices because they take home rebates as a cut of list prices. And the insurance companies don’t care because the pharmacy benefits managers forward part of the rebates to them, and as long as the actual net costs are low they benefit more from higher list prices. Also for many instances the same companies own both insurer, pharmacy benefit manager and the pharmacy.

This all plays along nicely because they point the fingers at the companies producing the actual drugs as the bad guys because “prices are rising” yet for many drugs the pharmacy benefits manger and insurer take 2/3 of the entire cost! While the companies actually doing research, production, marketing and distribution take 1/3 to cover everything. And while they get blamed for the list price increases, their yearly net take-home on the drugs is steadily falling.

Hell no! Try paying fewer hundreds ofillions to execs and divert that savings to research, sales and marketing.

Everything will be magically financially viable again

Reply on news.ycombinator.com