this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Pfizer says it will price Covid treatment Paxlovid at nearly $1,400 for a five-day course, which researchers estimate only costs Pfizer $13 to produce. That's a 10,000%+ markup. Shameful. (mastodon.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/big-pharma-research-and-development-new-drugs-buybacks-biden-medicare-negotiation

Last year, the three largest US-listed pharmaceutical companies by revenues, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck, spent a combined $39.6 billion on R&D. That is, admittedly, a lot of money. But less than Medicare is currently paying on just ten drugs

While Big Pharma holds vast portfolios of existing patents for prescription drugs, the innovation pipeline for new drugs actually has very little to do with Big Pharma. In reality, public sources — especially the NIH — fund the basic research that makes scientific breakthroughs. Then small, boutique biotech and pharmaceutical firms take that publicly generated knowledge and do the final stages of research, like running clinical trials, that get the drugs to market. The share of small companies in the supply of new drugs is huge, and it’s still growing. Fully two-thirds of new drugs now come from these small companies, up from one-third twenty years ago. It is not the research labs of Pfizer that are developing new drugs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The clinical trials are the most costly and most risky part of development.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From the passage I already quoted:

In reality, public sources — especially the NIH — fund the basic research that makes scientific breakthroughs. Then small, boutique biotech and pharmaceutical firms take that publicly generated knowledge and do the final stages of research, like running clinical trials, that get the drugs to market.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That is not true. Small biotech usually cannot effort late stage development. They either just get buyed by big pharma. Or they licence the lead compound to big pharma and get royalties. Very few exemptions to this.

Edit: the link you provide cites this FT article as a source for this claim. However the article is about M&A and supports my point.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll assume you know more about this than I do despite the lack of any citation.

I refuse to believe there's an ethically acceptable business justification for this ridiculous markup.

The entire healthcare industry in the US is built on a foundation of corporate greed. This is just one obvious example.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

At least they loose exclusivity after 15 -20 years and generics are usually much cheaper.