Cost of Drugs

[G-Man]

I thought I would give just a little insight into why new drugs that come to market are expensive.

I am a doc who works at a drug company in the Pharmacovigilance Dept.   Basically we evaluate adverse events that patients experience while on our drugs during clinical trials and after they come to market as well.  We are a dept. of 65 people consisting mainly of nurses, pharmacists, and docs, as well as support staff.  We all work off of laptops, have either offices or cubes, receive benefits and pensions, and of course have vacation and sick time.  The company also does a 5% match on the 401K.

Our dept. makes absolutely no money for the company, instead, we cost the company millions to maintane the above.  For example, I just found out that just to data enter the information received into the database costs 9 million per year.  We use an outside vendor to do this data entry in order to save money.  They can pay the vendor without the costs of pensions, benefits, etc.

The reason for all of this is the insanely strict guidelines that the FDA, and now the EMA (Europes authority), have placed on the companies in order to protect the public.  IMO, a good thing, but very expensive.  There are other depts. as well, also due to the health authorites, that cost but do not generate money.  All of this, on top of the billions spent in research and development, sales, adverstising, travel expenses, clinical trials, and on and on, have to be built into the cost of a pill, or an injection, or a suppository.  And drugs manufactured for diseases that are not mainstream have to even more expensive because of the lower volume of use.

[musclehead]

I talked to a guy years ago that worked in the testing area for a pharma company. he told em some of the hoops they had to jump through and some of these trials took days to set up.

it all adds up, I don't expect it to be free,

[Bonzo]

After the accident, getting out of the hospital because of cellulites, The only anti biotic that worked, (they tried vancomicin) was Zyvox, $24OO for 20 pills, can I complain? not really I didn't lose my legs!

[G-Man]

I talked to a guy years ago that worked in the testing area for a pharma company. he told em some of the hoops they had to jump through and some of these trials took days to set up.

Days?  Now it takes months, sometimes years to get a drug trial up and running.  First you need to apply for an IND (investigation new drug) number from the FDA and what a wacky process that is.  Then you have research and hire investigators (physicians that conduct the trials at their offices or clinics), then you have to train them and the trial coordinators, recruit and randomize patients, get the drugs manufactured and supplied to the docs................


it all adds up, I don't expect it to be free,
[/quote]

Seems you're in the minority.  

[G-Man]

After the accident, getting out of the hospital because of cellulites, The only anti biotic that worked, (they tried vancomicin) was Zyvox, $24OO for 20 pills, can I complain? not really I didn't lose my legs!

Yup, the non-maintenance drugs are the most expensive ones.

And the manufacturer can only keep it to themselves until the patent runs out.  Then any one of the generic companies can start producing it, without the overhead that the manufacturer had to lay out, and charge much less.