Comment by MichaelZuo 2 months ago
I’ve seen these comparisons a lot, but how is it determined that the actual quality of a name brand medicine is the same in the two different markets…?
i.e. The price difference could be reflecting a real qualitative difference such as being produced in different facilities, slightly less pure ingredients, less stringent QC, etc…
It feels very conspiratorial to suggest multinational pharmaceutical companies are creating low quality versions of their own branded drugs in Europe.
We know that these drugs cost roughly $10/dose to produce, and most of that is the auto-injector pens. Hardly seems worth ruining their reputation and getting punished be regulators to save a few dollars on something with a 600-6000% markup.
> We know that these drugs cost roughly $10/dose to produce…
Can you link the source?
If it really is a 600% to 6000% markup then it does seem unlikely they would try to save a few dollars.
yes, most of the costs are A) development and B) relatively fixed costs of maintaining the manufacturing staff and infrastructure.
The marginal cost of an additional batch is relatively small in comparison.
Developing a cheaper to produce product, even if that was done off-book and you could keep it secret, would need some level of different production methods (different ingredients, different machines or something which makes it cheaper) and some amount of testing which just selling the original product doesn't require.
I think these calculations are wildly optimistic. As far as I can tell, they basically ignore the cost of development, labor, quality assurance, and regulatory.
It is like estimating the cost of a rocket based on the price of metal.
Wait until I tell you about the bootleg version I get get from China for $9 for 5mg bottle of Semaglutide. It lasts a month for me and works great. You have to mix it with Bac water yourself so there's a little prep and there isn't a plastic infector. Have to inject yourself with a syringe. These are 3rd party tested so there is some level of safety involved.
Drugs cost what they cost because of R&D, not manufacturing.
Look at how cheap generics are, that's what it costs to actually make and distribute a drug.
The pharma business model is that you spend incredible amounts of money on doing research, identifying promising drugs, doing trials, and overcoming all the regulatory hurdles you need to overcome to get the drugs to market. You then get a 20-year[1] exclusivity deal on your newly-introduced drug through patents, which you use to recoup your costs.
You don't just recoup the costs of inventing this particular drug, but also all the other drugs that seemed promising, had all that money spend on trials, but ended up just a bit too ineffective to ever be sold.
We could abolish the patent system and genericize everything, and that would instantly bring drug prices down massively, but then we wouldn't ever see any new drugs being researched.