Yet somehow I'm not encouraged by guys owning 7 homes and driving around in Ferraris who do not much but find ways to prevent competitors from eating their cake.
This is a CEO compensation issue, not a big pharma issue, though big pharma is possibly just as guilty of it as any other industry. This all goes back to what constitutes the "reasonable profit" idea... If you're a successful CEO of a pharma company, then yeah, I can understand making a reasonably nice living... 7 homes and multiple Ferraris are definitely a bit much. Still, I'm not saying they should live like paupers either. Let's split the difference and say they're allowed to have one really nice house, a smaller vacation house, a Lexus, and either a small plane or a boat, unless their company is some how so crazy productive that they produce large numbers of amazing drugs any given year that even small profits all add up to allow the CEO to purchase the 7 homes and multiple Ferraris. However, if they are riding on only one drug and milking it for all it's worth, then yeah, I see something of a problem there. CEO compensation should definitely be tied towards overall productivity and company performance, and not just ways they can game the system to make shoddy productivity and performance more profitable.
This also seems to be mostly a problem with American companies due to the ridiculously high ratio of compensation of the CEO relative to the lowest paid employees. European companies have a much smaller ratio.
FWIW, as I said, they only have 20 years or so to block competition before the patents expire and anyone with suitable facilities can make the drugs.
I present the following in which muppet claims: > Drug companies as proxy for blame for systemic and widespread healthcare industry corruption > Drug companies will find a way to patent chemicals with public domain formulations & that generic versions will be prohibited > Drug companies do more damage than Drug cartels > Drug companies overcharge for meds, despite initial investment costs, restrictive timelines, etc.
Legalization needs to come with a general ban on patents for these drugs.
I'm all for legalization, but not for the exclusive benefit of selected billion dollar corporations with a few congressman in their pockets.
My argument is that pharma companies engage in insane murderous bullshit as bad as any cartel, just quieter and usually slower.
49 mutilated bodies is violent and dramatic and makes a shocking headline. Thousands of patients disabled by flawed drugs and manipulated research data are worse.
I'm arguing that the systemic, widespread--and difficult to statistically aggregate--damage that corruption in the pharma industry does is arguably worse than the localized and dramatic type of damage that is generally caused by drug cartels.
I'm saying that the pharmaceutical industry has a pretty significant and frightening dark side that needs to be addressed just as badly as illegal drug cartels.
I stand by my assertion that corrupt big pharma practices are far more dangerous and injurious to society and on a grander scale than the relatively penny-ante shit the Mexican cartels are perpetrating.
The cartels can keep on cutting off heads as far as I'm concerned until we've addressed far more powerful, far more dangerous players like GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer.
I have never once argued that gang violence should be ignored, just that I don't think it should have special priority or status over corruption in an industry that kills or harms at least as many people and, much more likely, kills or harms far *more* people and that the latter is really no better than the former in terms of societal harm.
45,000--possibly 90,000 depending on who you listen to--deaths related to Mexican drug war (of which some fraction are the work of cartels) in a 3 year period.
45,000 people dead in the US per year because they cannot afford either medical treatment, or medication.
So, it's difficult or impossible to draw a direct line between deaths caused by the cost of medication (and an implied failure to provide medication to those who need it) and deaths caused by Mexican drug cartels, but damn, the numbers do seem to imply more deaths occur as a result of the former.
No, you can't blame big pharma for all those deaths. I said as much when I linked the articles and I further carefully used the more general "healthcare industry" in subsequent comments.
Lastly, public domain can easily be skirted with a little corporate friendly regulation ESPECIALLY if they can scream "For safety! For the children!" loud enough and in the case of currently illegal drugs, this road is already paved for them. That was pretty much the entire crux of my statement way back a bojillion posts ago.
The cartels are "worse" in a way because they have no good side at all, but they're still doing less damage globally, in my opinion.
Should company size have an impact on CEO pay? Should a CEO of a $10M company make the same as one in charge of a $10B company?
Probably. I can't imagine ANY human's input being worth an equivalent order of magnitude more than another's beyond a certain point.
This is why the stupid high absolute top tax bracket of the good old days was a good idea. Past a certain point money stops having meaning to CEO-types, and becomes a competition to raise an arbitrary number that is essentially wrecking the world.
I present the following in which muppet claims: > Drug companies as proxy for blame for systemic and widespread healthcare industry corruption > Drug companies will find a way to patent chemicals with public domain formulations & that generic versions will be prohibited > Drug companies do more damage than Drug cartels > Drug companies overcharge for meds, despite initial investment costs, restrictive timelines, etc.
* participants, not proxies
* if not patent, secure some sort of regulatory monopoly. You think this isn't likely?
* The healthcare industry certainly does. The only question is how much ownership pharma has in that.
* Intuitively, I think they do. I have also more or less admitted that I can't quantify it (yet.)
Yet somehow I'm not encouraged by guys owning 7 homes and driving around in Ferraris who do not much but find ways to prevent competitors from eating their cake.
This is a CEO compensation issue, not a big pharma issue, though big pharma is possibly just as guilty of it as any other industry. This all goes back to what constitutes the "reasonable profit" idea... If you're a successful CEO of a pharma company, then yeah, I can understand making a reasonably nice living... 7 homes and multiple Ferraris are definitely a bit much. Still, I'm not saying they should live like paupers either. Let's split the difference and say they're allowed to have one really nice house, a smaller vacation house, a Lexus, and either a small plane or a boat, unless their company is some how so crazy productive that they produce large numbers of amazing drugs any given year that even small profits all add up to allow the CEO to purchase the 7 homes and multiple Ferraris. However, if they are riding on only one drug and milking it for all it's worth, then yeah, I see something of a problem there. CEO compensation should definitely be tied towards overall productivity and company performance, and not just ways they can game the system to make shoddy productivity and performance more profitable.
This also seems to be mostly a problem with American companies due to the ridiculously high ratio of compensation of the CEO relative to the lowest paid employees. European companies have a much smaller ratio.
FWIW, as I said, they only have 20 years or so to block competition before the patents expire and anyone with suitable facilities can make the drugs.
It goes beyond compensation issues when the anti-competitive practices begin actually harming research, development, and distribution. I wish I had a ready example, I can half-recall at least 3 but that's useless for purposes of discussion.
I present the following in which muppet claims: > Drug companies as proxy for blame for systemic and widespread healthcare industry corruption > Drug companies will find a way to patent chemicals with public domain formulations & that generic versions will be prohibited > Drug companies do more damage than Drug cartels > Drug companies overcharge for meds, despite initial investment costs, restrictive timelines, etc.
* participants, not proxies * if not patent, secure some sort of regulatory monopoly. You think this isn't likely? * The healthcare industry certainly does. The only question is how much ownership pharma has in that. * Intuitively, I think they do. I have also more or less admitted that I can't quantify it (yet.)
Perhaps you would have less of a problem if you - didn't use the words "pharma companies" and mean "health industry and patent system". - Weren't relying on "intuition" regarding certain claims
Should company size have an impact on CEO pay? Should a CEO of a $10M company make the same as one in charge of a $10B company?
That revenue or profit?
It goes beyond compensation issues when the anti-competitive practices begin actually harming research, development, and distribution. I wish I had a ready example, I can half-recall at least 3 but that's useless for purposes of discussion.
That's the problem with a lot of your arguments. You always claim to have "examples," but never seem to be able to deliver them.
I present the following in which muppet claims: > Drug companies as proxy for blame for systemic and widespread healthcare industry corruption > Drug companies will find a way to patent chemicals with public domain formulations & that generic versions will be prohibited > Drug companies do more damage than Drug cartels > Drug companies overcharge for meds, despite initial investment costs, restrictive timelines, etc.
* participants, not proxies * if not patent, secure some sort of regulatory monopoly. You think this isn't likely? * The healthcare industry certainly does. The only question is how much ownership pharma has in that. * Intuitively, I think they do. I have also more or less admitted that I can't quantify it (yet.)
Perhaps you would have less of a problem if you - didn't use the words "pharma companies" and mean "health industry and patent system". - Weren't relying on "intuition" regarding certain claims
This didn't become a formal debate until midway through, so stuff your smug shit. :-)
I'm pretty clear on my delineation between pharma companies and health industry throughout this entire thread. If others conflate the two when rebutting I can't control that.
The patent system does not make aggressive anti-competitiveness compulsory, this is why the term "defensive patent" exists.
The whole point of the patent system is to allow for temporary anti-competitiveness. If someone is legitimately stomping on your legitimate patent, you have every right to stomp them back.
Whether a patent is legitimate or not is a different argument, but that's besides the point here. If I spend years and tons of money inventing WonderDrug2012 and it's truly novel and not just as case of adding aspirin to a sleep aid and calling that "novel," damned straight I have every right to defend it as aggressively as possible.
The whole point of the patent system is to allow for temporary anti-competitiveness. If someone is legitimately stomping on your legitimate patent, you have every right to stomp them back.
Whether a patent is legitimate or not is a different argument, but that's besides the point here. If I spend years and tons of money inventing WonderDrug2012 and it's truly novel and not just as case of adding aspirin to a sleep aid and calling that "novel," damned straight I have every right to defend it as aggressively as possible.
I think I'm looking at the rampant abuse of software patents and beginning to see parallels in the pharma industry, which granted I'm less well-versed in.
The argument has gone into domains where I'm not qualified to argue from a position of authority. My only real assertion was, and has remained, that I think it's a really bad idea to legalize addictive substances for the use of for-profit industry. If it's gonna be grown by non-profits and regulated like crazy (including, perhaps, caps on organization size, output, executive pay) then I'm less antsy.
The whole drug cartel thing was a tangent and it's what people seemed most interested in. It certainly can be argued that a capitalist private healthcare industry does more damage--in terms of deaths--in the US than Mexican drug cartels do in Mexico.
I think I'm looking at the rampant abuse of software patents and beginning to see parallels in the pharma industry, which granted I'm less well-versed in.
Definitely. Patents in software and patents in drugs are very different issues, despite both being patents. The amount of time, effort, and novelty used to produce a legitimate drug patent is orders of magnitude higher than that to produce a software patent. Note that I also said "legitimate" patents. It's certainly possible that some pharma companies may come up with BS patents that somehow manage to get approved. However, if it's a case of them legitimately spending years of R&D to come up with a novel chemical compound that does something new, then yeah, I got no problem with them patenting it.
The argument has gone into domains where I'm not qualified to argue from a position of authority. My only real assertion was, and has remained, that I think it's a really bad idea to legalize addictive substances for the use of for-profit industry. If it's gonna be grown by non-profits and regulated like crazy (including, perhaps, caps on organization size, output, executive pay) then I'm less antsy.
Except this won't be a problem since all these addictive substances we've discussed are in the public domain. The generic industry will rush in like crazy to snap them up and that will keep prices low.
The whole drug cartel thing was a tangent and it's what people seemed most interested in. It certainly can be argued that a capitalist private healthcare industry does more damage--in terms of deaths--in the US than Mexican drug cartels do in Mexico.
Ugh, not this BS again. You're leaving out intent here, and intent goes a long way to determining how bad something is. Natural disasters kill a lot more people than the Mexican drug cartels do -- so does that make the cartels less evil than natural disasters?
Indifference and hubris are just as bad as malicious intent. Mexican drug cartels aren't in the murdering business, they're in the drug business.
Except this won't be a problem since all these addictive substances we've discussed are in the public domain. The generic industry will rush in like crazy to snap them up and that will keep prices low.
This is a major assumption, that the mechanism of legalization won't somehow circumvent the generic production of those public domain formulas or use of public domain methods. There is at least one drug, for miscarriage, that compounding pharmacists are forbidden to produce because a pharma company said it would hurt their profits, and I think prior art made a big swiss cheese mess out of their patent claim, wish I could recall the case right now.
I am with muppet in that intent doesn't matter (road to hell good intentions utilitarianism etc) and that letting big corporations push addictive drugs would be a terrible idea. (see : cigarettes) I dunno about that other stuff though.
Indifference and hubris are just as bad as malicious intent. Mexican drug cartels aren't in the murdering business, they're in the drug business.
Umm, no, that's why there are different degrees of murder, manslaughter, etc., on the books. Plus, the cartels murder people to further their business. The drug companies typically don't murder people to further their business (although knowingly selling dangerous drugs arguably counts as murdering people).
Plus, as imperfect as the system is, would you prefer the alternative, where no drugs are developed because there's no way for people to recoup their investment in developing new drugs?
You have continuously failed to address my argument that without the ability to turn a profit and recoup investments on drugs, there would be no new drugs developed. Unless you're advocating that all pharmaceutical research should be socialized or something. If so, why not come out and say it.
Indifference and hubris are just as bad as malicious intent. Mexican drug cartels aren't in the murdering business, they're in the drug business.
Umm, no, that's why there are different degrees of murder, manslaughter, etc., on the books. Plus, the cartels murder people to further their business. The drug companies typically don't murder people to further their business (although knowingly selling dangerous drugs arguably counts as murdering people).
Plus, as imperfect as the system is, would you prefer the alternative, where no drugs are developed because there's no way for people to recoup their investment in developing new drugs?
This all-or-nothing fallacy is the same thing Churba harped on all night and it adds nothing at all to the discussion. I haven't once argued for the dissolution of the American pharmaceutical industry. This is a false dichotomy. The choice isn't a broken patent system and first rate medicine for the rich only, or anarchy and field hospitals and snake oil.
You have continuously failed to address my argument that without the ability to turn a profit and recoup investments on drugs, there would be no new drugs developed. Unless you're advocating that all pharmaceutical research should be socialized or something. If so, why not come out and say it.
Absolutely it should, to the extent possible. Patents on drugs developed with government grants should be limited to a much shorter period and the government should subsidize their production. Absolutely.
Oh, but the geniuses will all go develop wonder drugs in Somalia if we do that, right?
You have continuously failed to address my argument that without the ability to turn a profit and recoup investments on drugs, there would be no new drugs developed. Unless you're advocating that all pharmaceutical research should be socialized or something. If so, why not come out and say it.
Absolutely it should, to the extent possible. Patents on drugs developed with government grants should be limited to a much shorter period and the government should subsidize their production. Absolutely.
Okay, comrade, I know where you stand...
Joking aside, I did argue that if any government grants were used during drug development, then the associated patent periods should be reduced or eliminated, depending on how much of the research was funded by said government grants. The full patent protections should only be applied to research funded by private money.
To be honest, if a purely socialized pharmaceutical development model can be demonstrated to be at least as effective as the privatized capitalist model at producing novel new life saving drugs, then I'd be all for it. However, given the dearth of revolutionary new drugs that came out of the Soviet Union, I have my doubts as to whether it would actually be effective.
Now, if we reach a post-money utopia like in Star Trek:TNG...
Should company size have an impact on CEO pay? Should a CEO of a $10M company make the same as one in charge of a $10B company?
That revenue or profit?
It goes beyond compensation issues when the anti-competitive practices begin actually harming research, development, and distribution. I wish I had a ready example, I can half-recall at least 3 but that's useless for purposes of discussion.
That's the problem with a lot of your arguments. You always claim to have "examples," but never seem to be able to deliver them.
Here's one I sort of remembered, still looking. Details are often not made public unless a government agency like the FTC gets involved, or at least not easily obtainable:
"Ovation bought the rights to Indocin IV from Merck in 2005, then snapped up rights to the only other medicine for that heart defect, Abbott Laboratories' experimental NeoProfen. After that acquisition closed, Ovation raised the price of Indocin to $500 per vial from $36 per vial."
The FTC LOST the anti-trust case, even though Ovation bought the rights to a treatment that saved the lives of premature infants, then bought the only competing drug (used off label for the same condition) and increased the price by almost 1400%.
ETA: the USSR was Fascist, not Socialist. They CLAIMED to be Socialist, and the US was happy to participate in the misnomer because US politicians were eager to have people think that the USSR's perverted brand of Socialism was all there was.
Okay, that goes beyond the issues of the patent system. That instead has to do with issues of antitrust law, which I feel also is severely flawed. I'm all for reform of antitrust law to prevent situations like this.
In any industry, you're bound to find abusers of the system. However, in that case, it's the legal system that needs to be reformed. You, instead, seem to be advocating for blowing the industry up.
Edit: wait a second... NeoProfen is just injectable ibuprofen, which is fully generic. How the hell were they able to get a patent on this? This is definitely a case of an illegitimate patent.
Edit 2: Indocin is off patent and now available as a generic, though it was difficult for generic manufacturers to ramp up the production capabilities for it.
Okay, that goes beyond the issues of the patent system. That instead has to do with issues of antitrust law, which I feel also is severely flawed. I'm all for reform of antitrust law to prevent situations like this.
In any industry, you're bound to find abusers of the system. However, in that case, it's the legal system that needs to be reformed. You, instead, seem to be advocating for blowing the industry up.
I really don't know how many times in one thread I can restate that I'm not advocating for blowing the industry up. I think you're deliberately trying to wind me up at this point.
Comments
This also seems to be mostly a problem with American companies due to the ridiculously high ratio of compensation of the CEO relative to the lowest paid employees. European companies have a much smaller ratio.
FWIW, as I said, they only have 20 years or so to block competition before the patents expire and anyone with suitable facilities can make the drugs.
> Drug companies as proxy for blame for systemic and widespread healthcare industry corruption
> Drug companies will find a way to patent chemicals with public domain formulations & that generic versions will be prohibited
> Drug companies do more damage than Drug cartels
> Drug companies overcharge for meds, despite initial investment costs, restrictive timelines, etc. to which I say:
* if not patent, secure some sort of regulatory monopoly. You think this isn't likely?
* The healthcare industry certainly does. The only question is how much ownership pharma has in that.
* Intuitively, I think they do. I have also more or less admitted that I can't quantify it (yet.)
- didn't use the words "pharma companies" and mean "health industry and patent system".
- Weren't relying on "intuition" regarding certain claims
I'm pretty clear on my delineation between pharma companies and health industry throughout this entire thread. If others conflate the two when rebutting I can't control that.
The patent system does not make aggressive anti-competitiveness compulsory, this is why the term "defensive patent" exists.
Whether a patent is legitimate or not is a different argument, but that's besides the point here. If I spend years and tons of money inventing WonderDrug2012 and it's truly novel and not just as case of adding aspirin to a sleep aid and calling that "novel," damned straight I have every right to defend it as aggressively as possible.
The argument has gone into domains where I'm not qualified to argue from a position of authority. My only real assertion was, and has remained, that I think it's a really bad idea to legalize addictive substances for the use of for-profit industry. If it's gonna be grown by non-profits and regulated like crazy (including, perhaps, caps on organization size, output, executive pay) then I'm less antsy.
The whole drug cartel thing was a tangent and it's what people seemed most interested in. It certainly can be argued that a capitalist private healthcare industry does more damage--in terms of deaths--in the US than Mexican drug cartels do in Mexico.
Plus, as imperfect as the system is, would you prefer the alternative, where no drugs are developed because there's no way for people to recoup their investment in developing new drugs?
Oh, but the geniuses will all go develop wonder drugs in Somalia if we do that, right?
Joking aside, I did argue that if any government grants were used during drug development, then the associated patent periods should be reduced or eliminated, depending on how much of the research was funded by said government grants. The full patent protections should only be applied to research funded by private money.
To be honest, if a purely socialized pharmaceutical development model can be demonstrated to be at least as effective as the privatized capitalist model at producing novel new life saving drugs, then I'd be all for it. However, given the dearth of revolutionary new drugs that came out of the Soviet Union, I have my doubts as to whether it would actually be effective.
Now, if we reach a post-money utopia like in Star Trek:TNG...
"Ovation bought the rights to Indocin IV from Merck in 2005, then snapped up rights to the only other medicine for that heart defect, Abbott Laboratories' experimental NeoProfen. After that acquisition closed, Ovation raised the price of Indocin to $500 per vial from $36 per vial."
The FTC LOST the anti-trust case, even though Ovation bought the rights to a treatment that saved the lives of premature infants, then bought the only competing drug (used off label for the same condition) and increased the price by almost 1400%.
Read more: FTC's antitrust loss may set pharma precedent - FiercePharma http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/ftcs-antitrust-loss-may-set-pharma-precedent/2010-09-28#ixzz28RWjnFWY
ETA: the USSR was Fascist, not Socialist. They CLAIMED to be Socialist, and the US was happy to participate in the misnomer because US politicians were eager to have people think that the USSR's perverted brand of Socialism was all there was.
In any industry, you're bound to find abusers of the system. However, in that case, it's the legal system that needs to be reformed. You, instead, seem to be advocating for blowing the industry up.
Edit: wait a second... NeoProfen is just injectable ibuprofen, which is fully generic. How the hell were they able to get a patent on this? This is definitely a case of an illegitimate patent.
Edit 2: Indocin is off patent and now available as a generic, though it was difficult for generic manufacturers to ramp up the production capabilities for it.