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| Authored by: BJ on Sunday, November 18 2012 @ 05:40 PM EST |
Thanks for an insightful post!
bjd
(Holland)
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 18 2012 @ 08:11 PM EST |
Sorry but you're WAY off regarding the statement that
"Nobody wants to make generic drugs". That is simply
nonsense. I work for a major international generics company.
It is no accident that the two largest Generics
Manufacturers in the world are non-American companies (TEVA
is Israeli, Sandoz is German.) It may well be true that no
US company wants to make generics but that is probably the
result of the vagaries of US regulations which make it
largely uneconomic to do so in the US.
The generics market is quite different than the traditional
pharma industry. Low margin, lower R&D costs (but still high
R&D costs). I know that the profit margin on some drugs we
produce is around 1 cent per pill and that with a brutally
efficient supply chain and highly efficient automated
production. Our company does not even submit tenders on
large supply contracts in some cases because of a zero
profit margin.
There is definitely a problem with the supply of a number of
essential drugs and vaccines. If society (and outside of the
US most societies DO) wants to make life-saving
drugs/vaccines available to all then they will have to spend
tax dollars to do so. "For-profit" industries will not meet
that demand without low quality, and that is something that
society also doesn't find acceptable, for very good reasons.
Would you expect GM to give away, or sell at a loss, cars to
rural populations, simply because they NEED them ?? Its
brutal, but that's where capitalism gets you.
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