Hacker News Reader

Comment by leonth | Hacker News Reader

Truth is, clinical trials are mind-bogglingly expensive and takes years for turnover. Also some newer drugs (I'm not sure about Nexavar) are rightfully expensive to manufacture due to requirements in equipment, sterile conditions, etc.

If I were to say anything negative about this it would be that this sets a bad precedent for any new drugs coming to India -- knowing that the government can effectively void out drug patents after certain number of years, the big pharmas probably would not want to set up shop in the country altogether. Does that sound familiar?

This town is no longer friendly for business.

View on HN

On principle, you are right. However, Rs 2.8 lakh for 1 month of pills is inordinately expensive. It's something that no one but aristocrats will be able to afford. By the standards of the Indian society, I fall in the upper middle class category, and that amount is almost half of my annual salary (more than half after tax deductions). To get an idea about how expensive it is, just think whether you could afford to buy a new car (even a cheap one) every month. Another point worth noting is that most Indians don't have medical insurance, since typical healthcare is quite cheap in India.

Under the new forced licensing terms, Bayer will still be making money. In fact, it might end up making pretty much the same as before, since volume will increase dramatically thanks to the 97% price cut.

Bayer doesn't have a problem with selling cheaper drugs to poor people, they do have a problem when those drugs go onto the grey market and get purchased by those who could afford Bayer's regular price.

That's why drug companies don't do differential pricing, because they can't stop the cannibalization of their wealthier markets.

Exactly. It's very similar to how content companies try to control the release of content and pricing around the world (region codes ugh). If any pharm company sells drug A in the US for $100 and sells the same drug in Africa for $1 then it's an obvious arbitration opportunity. They are trying to prevent the 'flat world' from eating sales by simply pricing it the same everywhere.

That's alright, as an Indian I support this action, and am ready to face the consequences. After all, we have 'socialist' in the constitutional definition of the republic. It's about time we invoked it for a good cause once in a while.

In case of Nexavar, another company is able to manufacture far more cheaply and that says something about Bayer. Either they are unable to manufacture cheaply or they are unwilling to price it cheaper.

Suppose that big pharma stops selling drugs in India. That wouldn't make much difference because the generic drug manufacturers would still make cheap copies of the drugs. The only downside would be that new drugs will take time to be introduced because of the time needed to reverse engineer the formulae and set up manufacturing capabilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com