Psycho-Babble Medication | about biological treatments | Framed
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Take two and call me in the morning...

Posted by Althea8869 on February 15, 2004, at 17:23:13

In reply to I'll testify for you, posted by leo33 on February 15, 2004, at 0:20:34

leo33, couple things - i respect your opinion on these issues, and share some of them, but disagree on your post for the following reason(s):
Lets say you sued and won against wyeth, in that case, you would get a large payout(although it would be reduced on appeal-and wouldnt affect wyeth's cash flow anyway) and you still wouldnt feel any better. So you would begin the process of trying to find a new drug to help. But now theres a problem. Because of the lawsuit, all the major pharm's are increasing their insurance coverage which is going to cost them money, how do they cover that money? You guessed it drug prices go up. What else happens, your emplyers insurance plan will be charged more as well, so to retain their margins they will pass of the increased premiums to the workers in the form of higher deductions and probably fewer options for coverage. So you get doubly taxed. In the mean time, the pharm has still laid out $0.
Ok, so far so bad. But there's more: as a result of the lawsuit and the ones that follow, all prescription drugs prices will rise and your co-pay will rise too - everything from aspirin to cold syrup will all follow suit to reflect a higher pricing equilibrium on pharm products.
But none of this is the worst part. The worst part is the effect on the R&D pipeline. Drug development that might otherwise have continued will slow due to concerns over side effects that we are simply not at a stage that we can control them - certainly not on a person by person basis. At that point the board of directors of your pharm company has decided that due to the increasing liabilities involved, they will place far greater resrictions on which development projects to continue, in some cases companies will decide that it doesnt make sense to continue developing these medications - let the smaller labs do it. Only problem is the smaller labs dont have the $$ to afford the high tech equipment needed to due this development, so they borrow big from the bank and pass on the interest payments to you - the consumer - in the form of , you guessed it, higher drug costs on products developed in inferior labs.
So, you may ask, how does all this end....you go to your doc and ask him to prescribe something new to help you and he replies that, for insurance reasons, he cant prescribe 95% of the medications that are available to help you as a result of their possible side effects. He tells you to go to CVS and take some aspirin and cross your fingers. Thats the cycle that would take place more or less.

THE SOLUTION is not going after the pharms, but to force a change in the clinical testing and reporting guidelines that the FDA uses, increase non-party oversight, and remove, almost completely, the developer from the trials process. They can conduct studies if they wish, but reports on efficacy and all other pertinent info will come entirely from state or private testing facilities, who will report only to the FDA.

Its either that or aspirin.


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Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:Althea8869 thread:53462
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040215/msgs/313719.html