Merck Sues Over Law Empowering Medicare to Negotiate With Drugmakers

[Dill]

(06-06-2023, 07:52 PM)GMDino Wrote: 14.5 billion in profits just isn't enough to "Take risks" when they may have to negotiate a few different drugs after a few years on the market.

Maybe capitalism is unconstitutional?  

I mean if we can't over price cancer drugs are we even America?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/business/merck-medicare-drug-prices.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

Jeezus. Trying to incentivize big pharma to research "unprofitable" drugs for rare diseases has been a problem for some time.

Now they are threatening to curtail research into those areas that already required government incentives/subsidies?

This sounds very much like MercK et al. are trying to protect near monopoly conditions in which they fleece the public twice--first in their reliance on innovation whose costs are born by small companies and socialized research in gov. and university labs, and then when they market the end product which they have "branded."  Add to the large number of new "patents" they file which merely tweak existing innovations to keep control over their production and sale. 

Finally "big government" will start negotiating Medicare prices instead paying whatever Big Pharma wants. What a shock when we get a president who sides with the consumer rather than corporate profit margins.

Two thirds of drug innovations nowdays come from university and gov. funded labs. E.g., COVID vaccines:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-billion-dollar-covid-vaccines-basic-government-funded-science-laid-the-groundwork/

The graph in this article shows how the proportion of marketing expenses to research looked 8 years ago:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/