Biogen-Sage Therapeutics postpartum depression pill priced at $15900

Given that human breast milk can be (imperfectly) substituted, the benefits clearly outweigh the cost regarding depression and suicide. Even more so when you factor in the possible health and QoL ramifications for children who lost their mother to suicide.

Because tax payers are going to pay for it?

Drug research is expensive and drug companies aren’t charities

Guess I'll die

From the article: "Jefferies had estimated peak sales of... $250 million to $500 million for postpartum depression."

How much does it cost to bring a drug to market and then manufacture and distribute it? If it was a $6 pill, this would simply have never been developed, let alone distributed to struggling mothers.

I think the high cost of drugs is a symptom of an ignored issue. The fact is that it costs an eye-watering sum to get something to market. Obviously not all of it is remediable, after all, someone still has to do the biology and science work in a state of the art lab to invent these things. But some of it is remediable. I remember a press conference by the head of the FDA during Covid, who proudly stated that the vaccine was going to be approved 10x faster than other drugs without compromising safety or efficacy. That's great! But if we aren't sacrificing safety or efficacy and getting new drugs 10x as fast, why isn't that standard operating procedure?

If it were to cost only $20m or $50m or $100m to get a new drug to market instead of up to $2 billion (current avg cost estimate per CBO.gov website), I imagine drugs would start at lower price points, and even if the free market didn't do its thing, regulating prices would be easier without defacto banning new drugs.

But this is just a simple economic argument. I am not a biochemical researcher, and I don't want Thalidomide to happen again. But as long as it costs $3-$10 billion to break even on new drugs, (let alone profit) I don't see how drug prices can get lower. It's just math.

Well one factor is drug companies' outsized margins: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7054843/

The way the system is set up, if the drug is FDA approved, insurance companies and medicare basically have to pay for it, regardless of the price. The drug companies are testing exactly how far they can push this before the system changes. So far it has remained resilient.

Ever heard of Martin Shkreli ?

1. It is not the price of the pill. It is the price of the entire 14 day course. 2. There are only 500K or mothers who suffer from PPD each year in USA. May be 200K or so of them would actually be willing to take medicines. And if the course costs say $100 then it would be $20M in revenue. Do you really think it is possible to run it profitably while employing 100s of people making and testing and distributing these pills ? Especially given that infants are involved ?

The women suffering from postpartum depression are presumably getting way more than $16k in value from the treatment.

Furthermore, developing drugs and bringing them to market is a long, expensive process.

You can't just package "people who love you" into a pill though.

That probably requires rewinding society to where we all lived close to extended family.

I wonder how effective this is compared to a 15k cash infusion

It's almost certainly less. Keep in mind though that your treatment isn't 100% effective either, particularly considering the hormonal changes involved.

Well this is a postpartum pill so plenty of exercise may be out. Depending on how labor and birth went the mother may not be in any condition to exercise. Also I think most mothers already get more time with loved ones postpartum than other times.

Postpartum is typically a time of little sleep, rapidly changing hormones, and lots of lifestyle changes too. So postpartum depression is very common, and not something that is so trivial to solve.