What Should We Pay for Drugs?
Critics say BC's new pharma panel, stacked with drug firm reps, may erode safety, raise costs.
Alan Cassels: Pharma watchdog.
Health Minister George Abbott's November appointment of a new pharmaceutical task force stacked with people connected to the industry is taking fire from critics.
Former MP and head of the Federation of Retired Union Members, Joy Langan, calls it "shocking and unbelievable." NDP health critic Adrian Dix says the panel's composition is "extraordinary and bizarre." Health researcher and writer Alan Cassels says, "People in my world are sort of bewildered by the whole task force."
Five of the nine people on the panel have clear connections to the pharmaceutical industry, including Russell Williams, the Ottawa-based head of the drug industry lobby group Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D).
Before Abbott appointed Williams to the panel, he was already registered as an active lobbyist.
Williams' entry in the province's lobbyist registry fails to provide the details of when he was lobbying or with whom he's been talking, something an Information and Privacy Commissioner's office representative says they'll be contacting him about this week. The subjects, however, include national pharmaceutical policy, drug safety and effectiveness, and drug access and pricing. All are topics Abbott's new task force is supposed to address as well.
So, just what does Williams want to tell British Columbians about our drug policies? A media handler in his Ottawa office took the question and said he would try to set up an interview for Dec. 10, but in the end Williams wasn't available.
BC example watched nationally
Critics of Abbott's new panel say nobody is likely to represent the interests of patients or the public. NDP health care critic Adrian Dix was among those advocating having someone like Alan Cassels added to the panel.
Cassels, who is a drug policy researcher affiliated with the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Victoria and is critical of the panel's pro-drug firm slant, considers Williams in particular an odd choice. "He represents the association that sued the government twice and lost over reference pricing," he says. "These are known foes of the government."
B.C. has been doing some things right to contain the amount the province spends on drugs, Cassels says. But every dollar the government saves is one the drug industry doesn't pocket. With talk of setting up a national drug plan growing, he says, industry players may want to quash the B.C. example.
The province's press release identified areas the panel would look at including the Common Drug Review, the Therapeutic Initiative and how it is decided which drugs PharmaCare covers. All are areas the industry doesn't like, Cassels says, and would not want to see replicated or strengthened in a national plan.
Since Cassels won't be on the panel, The Tyee asked him to walk us through those areas and give his perspective on why the industry might want to get rid of them.
Common Drug Review
The Common Drug Review is a federal group founded in recent years to provide advice to the provinces on which new drugs their public plans should cover. "They determine how does the drug fit among all the other drugs that are out there," says Cassels. "The Common Drug Review is probably enemy number one. It's questioning the value of their products."
If a new drug does the same thing as an older drug, but it's twice as expensive, the review would tell provinces paying for it that it is not a good use of public dollars. "That just drives the pharmaceutical companies fricking nuts. They just hate it."
Less than 10 per cent of new drugs represent medical breakthroughs, he says, so the vast majority of new products should not and do not gain endorsement during the review process. The beautiful thing about it, he says, is the decisions, based on "the rules of evidence," are made at a distance from the politicians and the lobbyists.
The review has given several drugs the thumbs down. "I would say they're one of the best things to ensure we're getting value out of our drug budgets."
As it happens, B.C. was a strong proponent for setting up the Common Drug Review. "Why are they bringing up a task force to question the very existence of it? It strikes me as bizarre," Cassels says.
Therapeutics Initiative
The Therapeutics Initiative, based at the University of British Columbia, has a similar mandate to the Common Drug Review. "The Therapeutics Initiative looks at the evidence," says Cassels who does not currently work for the initiative, but has in the past. "They do extensive reviews of the evidence on new drugs then make recommendations to the government and physicians. . . . They don't make policy decisions. They offer opinions about the quality of the evidence."
Those opinions carry weight with the people who make the decisions on what gets covered, he says. "The government does rely heavily on the Therapeutics Initiative because they are the body of expertise."
The agency has had a number of successes at raising early alarms, says Cassels.
The best example is Vioxx, an arthritis drug that Merck & Co. pulled from the market after it became apparent it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. While the drug was prescribed widely, it was used less often in B.C. than anywhere else in Canada.
"The warnings really came from the Therapeutics Initiative," says Cassels. The initiative warned there were many unknowns about the drug and there was a large potential for adverse affects. "Nobody else in the country was doing this. We prevented a lot of unnecessary deaths." He estimates at least 600 deaths were avoided in B.C. thanks to the initiative's caution on Vioxx.
The recommendation on Vioxx also saved the government about $500 million, says Cassels. That's good news if you are responsible for controlling public spending, but not so good if you are in the business of selling drugs. "Those are lost profits to companies. They will do whatever they can to stop that from happening."
No wonder, says Cassels, Abbott's new corporate-heavy PharmaCare panel wants to look at the Therapeutics Initiative. "They've always been hated by the drug companies," he says. "The reason the pharmaceutical industry hates them is they demand value from drugs. They encourage the government not to be spending on drugs with no additional value."
Reference Pricing
Another area where the panel will likely want changes is the government's policy of reference pricing, where PharmaCare pays for the cheapest drug that works.
The policy is used in just five classes of drugs, representing about 30 of the 5,000 medications on the market in the province. When a doctor sees a patient, says Cassels, "He's limited to prescribing the cheapest and oldest medicine first."
That older medicine in many cases will work just as well as the newest version of a drug, but at a fraction of the cost. If a patient tries the older drug and it doesn't work, the doctor can fill out a form asking for "special authority" to prescribe a newer one. Some 98 percent of those applications are approved, says Cassels.
Panel vice-chair George Morfitt led a 2002 review that found the program works well and saves the government about $12 million a year. Researchers at Harvard University and McMaster University have studied the policy and found it does not affect the health results for patients.
While reference pricing might be good for patients and the government that pays the bills, it does restrict drug companies' ability to charge top prices for new treatments that are no better than old drugs.
National program pushed
The threat to B.C.'s PharmaCare program comes at a time when pressure is mounting for a national drug plan. It is something the provinces and the federal government have been talking about in recent years and public meetings on the topic were held in Vancouver and Victoria earlier this week.
"It was always intended when medicare was set up in the '60s there'd be a national drug plan, but it's never seen the light of day," says Cassels. There's political support for the idea, but with Canadians spending some $21 billion a year on drugs, it's hard for politicians to commit to covering the bill. He says, "They get sticker shock big time."
That's where B.C. may have much to share with the rest of the country, Cassels says, and why the drug companies are keen to rewrite the province's policies. "A national PharmaCare program would only really be feasible with a strict approach to cost effectiveness. Otherwise it will never be affordable."
An interesting question for the panel to look at, he suggests, is how much money the Therapeutics Initiative, reference pricing and the Common Drug Review save the provincial government. "If that research got out to the rest of the country, every province in the country would be replicating the Therapeutics Initiative," he predicts.
But with Williams and others with drug industry connections dominating the panel, those questions, says Cassels, are unlikely to be on the agenda.
Related Tyee stories:
- Drug Firms' Sway over BC's New PharmaCare Task Force
Most panel members have strong links to drug industry. - BC Health Advice: Censored and Skewed?
Libs cancel a critic, open door to pharma lobbyists. - Now You Can Read What Doctors See
'Open Medicine' lets public view medical research. Med 2.0?
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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The brain
4 years ago
Isn't that nice
Isn't that a wonderful thing Gordon Campbell has done for all the wonderful Corporate lobbyists he's helped get elected in his government and appointed in panels and boards and whatever else he can do to deregulate and privatize BC's crowns to facilitate the sale of Canada to the U.S... just like his buddy Stephen Harper does.
Thanks so much, Gordon.
EDITED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS. I wonder if he ever thinks about the people he's served the least, if this man is even capable of thinking about anyone else but himself.
Fiat lux
4 years ago
In the New World Order
In the New World Order everybody is supposed to be on drugs from childhood to the grave.
As the article also points it out, drugs, either legal, or illegal, have become the chains around society's neck, without any real, logical, or legal purpose.
Abbott' decision has nothing to do with realities, but the government's commitment to enhance corporate profits and, in reality, their growing dictatorship.
We've switched over to homeopathics many inhuman years ago, are very healthy for our age, still do full dsys' work and at 80 and 79, we take no drugs whatsoever.
At the same time we see our contemporaries with dozens of bottles of junk they're persuaded to take by brainwashed doctors, and when we hear of somebody having prescribed blood thinners, we're ready to say goodbye to them, as we've seen several old friends of our knocked out by that junk.
In any case, in my 51 years as a registered voter in BC, I've never seen more corrupt governments than we now have at all levels, from federal down, using the neoclassical market economic theory to justify their inhuman, illegal, undemocratic and destructive actions.
Ed Deak.
Van Isle
4 years ago
Just more pigs at the trough.
Just more pigs at the trough.
gkam
4 years ago
picking on
Oh, you folks are just picking on those poor rich guys pushing pills for profit. Don't you want to be a hotbed of rampant Capitalism? Don't you want to be like us in the US - hooked and helpless?
We always hear how much it costs to develop a drug, but what they don't tell you is they spend far much more than that advertising it. It's their biggest cost - graft ain't cheap.
HawkEyes
4 years ago
I'm baffled...
...when I was cashiering a couple of years ago, people could not afford their prescriptions and were overwhelmed, they were paying hundreds monthly.
I know Ed is right, but some people hold on to their prescriptions for dear life...
Fiat lux
4 years ago
When I was in the custom
When I was in the custom furniture business in Vancouver in the 60s and 70s, the largest professional group of my customers were doctors, psychiatrists and sometimes we talked for hours, as many were interested in my experiences and I also picked their brains.
Even then, many admitted that up to 70% of all real illnesses have psychosomatic causes.
The bodies can no longer take the stress and cause real illnesses to make people quit. This must be far higher now, as the stresses and the psychological warfare against people to accept fascist rule are much higher than 30-40 years ago, when we still had some relatively independent media.
I've never forgotten this and when I see people loading up on medications, I often wonder whether it is to soothe their psyches, but without any practical, or logical reasons.
Ed Deak.
avandoc
4 years ago
medications can be life saving
And that explains why people will pay for them. Of course some are less necessary, but nonetheless, the fact that people's life may depend on them is why we need a good and rational public policy. We won't get a rational one, as Cassels and others like him advocate for, with the pharma industry calling the shots.
This government is appallingly enmeshed with corporations, and most people in BC seem to be satisfied with that. They don't manage to see that the public purse is being pilfered. The pharma industry passed a law in the US that prevents the government from using its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices. Canada will be easy pickings for them to do the same with BC Liberals and federal Conservatives in charge. I need a pill!
RickW
4 years ago
Drug Markups
http://www.everlastinglife.net/ads/pharmacy_swindle.htm
Thanks to Mulroney, the drug companies have a 20 year monopoly on marketing. Does anyone know it this is still the case?
Also, interesting article on drugs and addiction:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.12-health-rat-trap/
This goes especially to what Ed posted.....
realisticman
4 years ago
Patent Protection
RickW
It's complicated but any creator should be allowed some protection from having their work copied.
http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp354-e.htm
avandoc
4 years ago
Patents
Yes, the patents for medications are 20 years. Canada had to extend patents in order to sign onto GATS and other international trade regimes. Pharmaceutical companies aren't even satisfied with that duration of government-sanctioned monopoly. They often find tricky ways to extend patents in order to prevent generic from coming onto the market and undercutting them. They may slightly change the form in which the is delivered, for instance time-release pills. In the US they have even managed to get special language into legislation in Congress to extend a specific patent.
They whine about the costs of research and development as a rationale for their monopolies, but quite a bit of that is taxpayer funded, especially in the US. The National Institutes of Health have a huge budget for clinical trials.
The pharma companies enjoy big-time corporate welfare, and they're looking for more in BC. Abbot seems happy to give it to them. As for people who really need assistance, oh well.
G West
4 years ago
Protection for patents
If they want protection, let them pay back all the tax right-offs and research grants, not to mention the costs of research facilities at public universities and return the huge subsidies they get as a result of other tax deals, scholarships and subsidies first. As avando points out, this is a scam - the researchers are more than happy to have the public pay the freight until their research turns up something interesting...
Fair tax policy and an end to corporate welfare for drug companies is long past due. As Cassels explains in the article – most new drugs are not new drugs at all and frequently the old formulations work just as well.
The first thing Abbott needs to do is get rid of this bunch of industry clones.
Of course he won't; so the next job is to get rid of Campbell - and Abbott and the rest of them will collapse like a house of cards.
RickW
4 years ago
Patent Protection.....
The thing that doesn't square with this ol' "socialist" is the right-wing dichotomy involving the free market system and patent protection. The way I see it, if a government that believes in the free market system never-the-less offers monopolies to business so that investments can be recouped, then why doesn't self-same government extend this most generous offer to labour (whose investment is the time necessary to learn a trade)? Why the overt discrimination? (sorry -- rhetorical question, I fear)
realisticman
4 years ago
Protection
RickW
The trades have protection through licensing. No difference. No discrimination. If you're a licensed Aircraft Engineer or a welder with a 'Class B Ticket' you have your protection for your investment in learning that trade. You have a monopoly, if you like. If you invent a new device for welding you may seek protection from others copying your idea, or device by patenting that device.
My sympathy for pharmaceutical companies is greatly tempered by what I consider to be outrageous and disgusting behavior, by them, but, I do think that anyone that takes the trouble to create something, whether it be a piece of music, a new and innovative device, an original piece of art or a medicinal compound, deserves some protection from having it 'knocked off' and sold cheaply by others.
G West
4 years ago
If and when they actually create something
And after having paid back the public investment in their enterprise and so long as the 'new' drug isn't just a new formulation of the same old, same old and when big pharma stops putting roadblocks up for legitimate attempts to get medicines into the mouths of the third world folks who are dying because of their protectionist behaviors...
Then we can talk.
In the meantime, let's just reform the tax system now - and do what should have been done in the 70s.
The irony that Cuba has better health care outcomes than many first world countries and currently exports more doctors to places where they're needed than we do isn't really very funny.
The skilled labour metaphor is pretty lame considering the barriers to entry that generic manufacturers right here in Canada have encountered in trying to extend availability of cheaper drugs to the population right here - without even considering the problems in Africa.
Birds of another feather entirely R/man.
realisticman
4 years ago
Cuba and Canada Exports too
Barriers and another monopoly here too. In the doctor's profession.
Thus, America is not just 'stealing' physicians from poor countries, but also from it's rich neighbor Canada. A recent 2006-Data study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, titled - "The Canadian contribution to the US physician workforce" - studies about how Canada has been slowly losing its doctors and would-be doctors to the USA - thanks to two main factors - the much higher salaries in America and secondly, ample and better post-graduate training opportunities.
The amusing lines and highlights of the study were:
"The number of emigrant physicians approximates the current physician shortage in all Canadian provinces."
"If these physicians were to choose to stay and practice in rural Canada, this would dramatically alleviate physician shortages in rural areas of the country"
" In 2006, 1 in 9 Canadian-educated physicians practiced in the United States. If physicians who were born in the United States are excluded, this number is reduced to 1 in 12. Collectively, this is equivalent to having 2 average-sized Canadian medical schools dedicated to producing physicians for the United States."
...
" the results of the study highlight the lure of larger physician salaries in the private market-based U.S. medical climate, versus the government-run Canadian system, where physician salaries are limited to what the government will pay in compensation."
Of course, the Canadians are not happy to see their tax-dollars that fund canadian medical students being used to fill up vacancies in the US instead. Specifically, this editorial did not mince words speaking out :
"We can't afford to subsidize doctors' training only to see them head to the U.S. to rake in high salaries. And make no mistake, our tax dollars helped put them through med school. The thanks we get is seeing their tail lights as they head across the border. "
G West
4 years ago
Reform the tax system
Make higher education free and then require some actual service in return from those who benefit from it - we do no good for third world countries by poaching their medical professsionals either. It would also prevent the situation in many of our medical schools today where often more than half the students admitted are the children of doctors themselves.
BTW I'd really prefer you give an actual attribution rather than a selective quotation and something like this:
"A while ago, the New York times carried an article -"
RickW
4 years ago
G West
Taken from the annals of one B. Mulroney (you may have noticed him in the news of late), who was wont to say (approximately):
"Why should we make it when we can buy it?"
And we've been religiously following his dictum every since.....I mean, why train docs when we can poach them, eh?
RickW
4 years ago
R/Man
A "ticket" doesn't mean income security......
G West
4 years ago
Speaking of Brian
That was one heck of a poor performance today RickW, wasn't it?
I happened to see Andrew Coyne on the CBC news tonight and, for the second or third time ever, I agreed with him.
Mulroney is in deep doo doo.
dorothy
4 years ago
Right on, Ed
"We've switched over to homeopathics many inhuman years ago, are very healthy for our age, still do full dsys' work and at 80 and 79, we take no drugs whatsoever."
I agree. Whatever I can't cure with OTC stuff, plant extracts or things I can buy in a pet shop I usually decide to live with, until it fixes itself. Most of the time, this is working well. My significant other has just gone through a somewhat cataclysmic health situation pretty much with flying colors, we believe due to the vitamins and antioxidants we have incorporated in our diet, and sensible eating generally. He is now taking just a small fraction of the drugs his GP foiste on him years ago, and is healthier than he has been in years. I can out-work and out-run my colleagues who are from ten to twenty years younger.
I think most prescription drugs are evil and toxic, and most doctors worth their salt actually are willing to admit that. Almost any other way of solving one's health problems is better in the long run.
RickW
4 years ago
Just Love "Breaking News" Like This:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/health/national/2007/12/13/folic-acid.html
The doctor business has consistently ignored this kind of information (not to their peril unfortunately -- only to mother and child), because it was "home remedy quackery" (and quite possibly because folic acid was free and not subject to prescription).......
Will the doctor business EVER really subscribe to preventative measures.......?
dorothy
4 years ago
Not any time soon, if ever...
"Will the doctor business EVER really subscribe to preventative measures.......?"
No. The village healers, who knew all this stuff, were incinerated in the name of Godliness. Then the church took over, and it was more interested in saving souls than lives. The modern doctor business grew out of a military setting, and you can imagine what preventative measures there would have amounted to... Their job was and is to patch up the wounded so as to put them in fighting order again. Mech wars, so to speak. Enlightenment must come from the ranks of the suffering people. Seek, and you shall find...
realisticman
4 years ago
rickW
A patent award does not ensure a profit...
G West
4 years ago
Patents and profits
But having an army of drug reps providing free samples and paying barrels of money for cute ads creating a 'need' for a drug to treat a non-problem - all expensed and deducted as a cost of doing business sure does...
Viagra monkey quank anyone?
Viagra nonny nonny whoop-whoop flaps!
Know what I mean?
G West
4 years ago
A little more to think about....
And quite on point too, I think:
(emphasis mine)
NEW YORK TIMES, April 30, 2007
Minky Viagra? Pfizer Doesn't Want You to Understand It, Just Buy It
By ALEX BERENSON
How much sexual innuendo can an advertiser pack into 15 seconds?
Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, offers an answer in a new campaign for Viagra, so far shown only in Canada. The ads feature middle-aged men and women talking in a made-up language, save for one word.
“Viagra spanglecheff?” says a man to a friend at a bowling alley.
“Spanglecheff?” his friend asks.
“Minky Viagra noni noni boo-boo plats!” the first man replies, with a grin that suggests he is not talking about the drug’s side effects. The ads end with the slogan, “The International Language of Viagra.”
Pfizer has always straddled a line marketing Viagra, insisting that the drug treats a serious medical condition, impotence, and deserves insurance coverage, while promoting the drug with wink-and-a-nod ads that have irritated regulators.
In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration told the company to stop running ads that included the lines, “Remember that guy who used to be called ‘Wild Thing’? The guy who wanted to spend the entire honeymoon indoors?”
The ads come as Viagra is losing market share to other impotence drugs. Last year, Pfizer’s Viagra sales totaled $1.7 billion, including $800 million in the United States.
Maxine Thomas, an executive at Taxi, the agency in Toronto that produced the campaign, said the ads take advantage of Viagra’s name recognition. “It’s not as though we need to tell people what it does, because they already know,” she said. “Consumers can fill in the blank for themselves.”
In the United States and Canada, drug companies can advertise medicines without discussing side effects, as long as they do not mention the condition the drug is supposed to treat. Such spots are called “reminder ads.”
But Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, said the new Viagra ads are merely a reminder that drug companies will say anything, even if it is incomprehensible, to increase sales.
“In an ideal world, companies would have to sell drugs based on accurate and balanced information,” he said. “That doesn’t seem to work well enough, so instead of that they’re substituting gibberish.”
RickW
4 years ago
In other words....
....a patent award to Big Pharma defintely produces a profit, even if it is a write down.
Try a write down on the cost of acquiring a "ticket"...........
You are right, G West. The playing field needs much levelling!
realisticman
4 years ago
RickW
Seems it is level.
Tax deductions for education.
2007 BRITISH COLUMBIA PERSONAL TAX CREDITS RETURN
TD1BC
G West
4 years ago
R/man
You MUST be joking!
Have you looked at the cost of textbooks, food and rent lately...I thought not.
Have a look at who the students in Med School at UBC are.
You'll be surprised at how many of them are the children of doctors....
realisticman
4 years ago
Off Subject
Sorry, West, old chap, but this the second time I've responded on this thread to RickW and you've been confused. I know you're everwhere-all-the-time but scroll up a bit and read more carefully please. I will concede, you frequently have seemingly informed, if strongly biased opinions, but you also and more frequently seem to be scribbling off responses that are not germane.
realisticman
4 years ago
GWest
Clearly, this comment from Westie has nothing whatsoever to do with the current discussion as to whether or not educational expenditures are deductible from earnings or not but who's surprised?
By the way West, food costs are historically lower than they ever have been. Surely you won't deny this fact?
G West
4 years ago
Do you have any idea what the cost of acquiring a 'ticket' is?
The fact that the expense is deductible is largely meaningless...in most cases a student doesn't make enough money to need the deduction anyway - even the fact that deductibility can be carried forward does little of nothing to help a student who is putting her or himself through college. In fact, wealthy parents pay all their kids’ fees and take a transfer of up to $5G per student per year to write off against their much higher income and therefore benefit more at their marginal rate of tax. Most students who actually work to try and put themselves through university pay little of no tax on a small taxable income. Once again, your understanding of the tax system and the way it favours the rich is deficient.
Why do you think so many of the students in med school have doctors for parents?
I can assure you it's not because they're more talented....and the cost of medical textbooks is NOT deductible even though medical texts form a significant portion of the costs of a medical education.
Sugar-laced, highly caloric, prepackaged gloop is cheap - good quality nutritious food is not cheap - it is more expensive now than ever - when it is available.
If you had any idea how much debt the average medical student (who doesn't have a couple of docs for parents) is, at the end of med school, you'd be arguing for a lot more help for them if you really wanted to address the so-called shortage of medical practitioners in this country.
You simply don't know what you're talking about
realisticman
4 years ago
once again
you're off topic. we were talking about welders.
you don't know what we were talking about.
realisticman
4 years ago
Not Yet
GWest
When is it not available, in Canada?
Food is cheaper than ever, even good food. Trouble is that this will probably not last with the ethanol craze is/will diverting food crops and India and China growing so fast.
G West
4 years ago
I know exactly what you and RickW were talking about
What are you talking about?
Why wouldn't I know what you were discussing? It's all there in black and white.
I know exactly what you were talking about - there is no comparison between the kind of access to a captive market that drug manufacturers have - and the case for welders, electricians or other skilled trades.
Your idea is facile and ridiculous - without even mentioning the physical risks, the danger and the seasonal and economic fluctuations in the trades when compared with the drug business. What were you thinking?
On the food issue:
Just like using GDP as a measure of economic health, those figures are meaningless for people on low and fixed incomes and students - you've been out of diapers way too long R/man - you've lost touch with the real world.
That stuff many Americans eat isn't food anyway - their chicken and meat is full of growth hormones; their milk is adulterated and their bread...well, less said the better.
Have a look at the ingredients list on some of those cereals by the way. And that product they call ‘cheese food’ – my god you might as well be eating lard. It’s worse than Marmite.
realisticman
4 years ago
So there you have it, RickW
Bring up the question of similar benefits;
and you get a response from GWest like this:
Therefore since old Westie won't let it go we'll just have to drop it and go back to slagging Big-pharma, which is more fun than discussing the patent protection issue, I guess.
As for food. No discussion there either. GWets, I was, of course, using an international study done the IMF and The Economist, not the US as you go on about. You really ought to consider the whole world sometimes, instead of concentrating on that distaste you have for anything American. Too much Red Dye No.3 in your diet perhaps. I purposely sought an international perspective on your silly supposition that food costs were high.
You've been out of diapers so long West that perhaps the time is coming when you're going back into them.
G West
4 years ago
Well
I hate to bring it up...but big pharma is central to the story at the top of this thread. (the cost of drugs)..and you've said absolutely nothing to contend with the point I made about the cost of food for poor people.
The issue of phony and excessive patent protection is absolutely crucial to the issue of drug prices and I could care less what the Economist and the IMF say - they're both in the back pocket of the people who are YOUR heroes - not mine.
I do consider the whole world - it's too bad the folks who swear by the economist still think globalization was something good for the world. It wasn't and they're just late to admit it. It’s also a big factor in patent protection and the high cost of drugs – especially for the poor people of Africa dying from curable diseases every day – should we discuss them too?
Like a certain former prime minister who got Canada into a deal with the US where they kept their trade laws and we gave up ours, they're mostly on the take.
Just like the drug companies.
Priced hamburger lately?
ME2
4 years ago
A retraction is in order
GWest, you are absolutely and totally wrong.
There is NOTHING that tastes worse than Marmite
G West
4 years ago
Have you tried Vegemite?
That cheese food stuff is pretty bad - but you're probably right - although there is something vaguely evil about its almost flourescent orange colour - they even have it in aerosol form now....
zalm
4 years ago
Come back to Canada, R'man
Crack a book and have a look at Canada's statistics. The BC CPI broken down into its various subheadings notes that food, based on 1992 = 100, has gone up more (128.4) than rented shelter (110.8), furnishings & operations (123.4), clothing (112.5) & electricity (114.7).
However, it has gone up less than alcohol (146.9) tobacco (164.3), transportation (154.2), health care (129.7), tuition (249.4) piped gas (239.7) and gasoline (197).
Taking all items into account and weighting them, we find that the CPI itself has gone up 127.5 as opposed to food at 128.4. And this isn't even the so-called Nutritious Basket of Food that nutritionists, social workers and reporters are now beginning to refer to, which costs even more.
Food costs more, buddy, and it's getting more expensive all the time. We're supporting a senior neighbour with meals who isn't getting all the allowances she's entitled to, and she's wayyyy below the poverty line. I think she'd be very happy with dog food, given what I''ve seen some people in Yaletown feeding their pets.
And abolishing the marketing boards isn't going to help either.
All figures from BC Stats CPI spec at http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/dd/handout/cpi_spec92.csv
Note - file is CSV.
You sure you're not the reincarnation of Ron Erwin? He had the same trouble with facts and figures that you seem to.
realisticman
4 years ago
GWest
Fair tax policy and an end to corporate welfare for drug companies is long past due. As Cassels explains in the article – most new drugs are not new drugs at all and frequently the old formulations work just as well.
Yes, it is crucial. What do think is a fair and reasonable time for patent protection? Something not as you say, "excessive"?
By the way, not being a hamburger eater I haven't priced ground beef lately. Perhaps Ed Deak can tell us the current and the historical prices.
realisticman
4 years ago
zalm
Thanks for the reference. I see from the figures you provided that cumulatively food has increased by 26.6% in price in Canada since 1992. That's 1.77% average increase per year during the period. Not too much I'd say.
Very interesting to see that rented shelter has gone up even less, around 1% per year, even though the economy as a whole has grown and the government's books are balanced. No wonder the Canadian dollar has gone up. Since imported food will now be less expensive due the soaring dollar I expect next years figures to show even less inflation, don't you think zalm?
G West
4 years ago
My suggestion.
First:
Pay back from initial profits (after interest and taxes have been paid) every penny of government help, (including deferred property taxes) research monies and grants relative to the specific project involved and any applicable portion of capital costs shared by, borrowed from or utilized by the firm in order to do the research. All of which to be accounted for transparently from the moment the funds are received....
Second:
Once those funds are repaid in full the patent holder should be entitled to license (but not to withhold from others) the patent and produce the drug itself for a period not to exceed 10 years... licence fees to be determined by an independent professional body set up to conduct the necessary evaluations and to provide quality control for the duration of the licence period.
Third:
At the end of 10 years, the patent enters the public domain.
Fourth:
No advertising or free distribution of drugs to physicians to be permitted except in the case of a REAL new drug (and then only for a 12 month window) – reformulations and chemical fiddles could not be advertised at all. Perhaps that would stop the drug companies' fixation with producing the damn things.
RickW
4 years ago
Anathema
Patent protection is anathema to the efficiency of the free market way of doing things. The two simply cannot be squared.
So in essence does one want competition, or does one want a controlled and regulated market?
Strange how those who profess to want the one, also want the other, by and large. Having one's cake and eating it too, I suppose.........
realisticman
4 years ago
Patents
ithout patent protection many innovations would never have been devised. The protection 'forced' inventors to come up with better 'mousetraps' and afforded the original creators the opportunity to benefit from the production and sales of their new and improved ideas.
The concurrent intellectual property rights give artists protection from others simply making facsimiles of their original works.
This is the essence of a controlled and regulated marketplace and stimulates competition.
realisticman
4 years ago
GWest
Would you say that your ten year protection should also apply to creative works by writers, for example? Like Stevie Cameron's "ON THE TAKE: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years". Or your next great novel or other book that you are planning? Should anyone be allowed to knock them off after 10 years and sell them?
How would your idea work in the real world vis-a-vis the pharmaceutical industry, for example, in Canada? Would they, the pharmaceutical companies simply move out to the USA or elsewhere, eliminating thousands of jobs?
G West
4 years ago
No
Writers, musicians, artists and the like are much more likely to produce works of individual genius without reliance on grants, extensive subsidies, huge publicly-financed institutions and the like.
Current copyright protection for such efforts ought to be retained...the drug industry and other commercial enterprises are a completely different animal. These are people who claim to worship at the altar of free market competitiveness - let them walk the walk - I'm actually more inclined to RickW's analysis when I really think about it.
And, if the companies want to leave Canada - let 'em. I doubt they would though - a market of 30+ million folks with a bit of jingle in their jeans is not something most capitalists would sneeze at either. As for the thousands of jobs - compared with the losses we've already experienced in manufacturing because of Mulroney's capitulation to American trade rules in the flawed NAFTA agreement - well, give me a break.
Canadian ingenuity, genius and inventiveness - given the proper encouragement and support - will do just fine in the global marketplace and our own generic drug companies can begin to manufacture (under the licensing arrangement I described) drugs for export that the people of the 3rd world can actually afford...As the industry is doing now in Brazil under current international trade exception rules.
RickW
4 years ago
R/Man
It is then, a crutch without which the marketplace would fall apart.....?
I think not. The only thing that would "fall apart" would be the constructs called corporations, none of which could exist without the application of force or the threat of force (otherwise known as government). Without the subsidy called "patent law", cottage industries would thrive, serving local markets, and stimulating local economies. People would band together to help and bolster one another (aka "community"), instead of being kept apart using this myth of the "rugged individual".
Self-employmnent would easily replace the loss of "thousands of jobs".....
realisticman
4 years ago
High Road
GWest
75,000 direct and indirect jobs and around $4 billion in value in Canada and we say that if you want to go, "let 'em". Then what, we 30 million just buy from manufacturers abroad. I don't think so. Nuts. Even wacky Jack Layton wouldn't go for that. 42% of these jobs are in Quebec, most of them in Jack's daddy's riding and voted for him and they aren't just going to say au revoir. The whole concept is moot.
http://www.investincanada.com/external.aspx?url=http%3a%2f%2fstrategis.ic.gc.ca%2fepic%2finternet%2finp-pp.nsf%2fen%2fHome
RickW
Your concept of cute little hamlets went out with the Middle Ages. Patent protection for original ideas is a world-wide concept. As I said, it stimulates innovation and helps us have better 'mousetraps'.
G West
4 years ago
I disagree - the fulminations never end
The myth of 'stimulated' competition - fostered by Drug company giveaways and ‘nonnie, nonnie googlecheff’ Viagra ads - is really little more a matter of 'simulated' competition. That's obviously what Campbell's drug-company friendly committee of friends is going to be all about anyway.
Did you actually read the journalism at the start of this thread?
The Canadian drug manufacturing industry would thrive and provide more than enough employment for folks laid off by the Quisling corporations that are nothing more than Yankee branch plants in Canada. Let ‘em go – this country needs a project and providing drugs to the poor and ill of the world – even if paid for out of the foreign aid budget (God knows that’s little enough compared with what it ought to be) is a hell of a lot better than providing an endless series of so-called ‘loans’ which will never be repaid to the businesses you worship.
Put ‘em on a diet and if they don’t like it too damn bad.
Have you forgotten the throngs of limited-income Americans who surged across the border to buy Canadian generic drugs that were much cheaper than their American counter-parts. We could even do a Hugo Chavez for the poor in upstate New York – just like he does with heating oil every year.
Have a little more confidence in you country and your countrymen and women R'man. I think we're meant to be Canadians and not deracinated ‘citizens of the world’. Or does our concep of country not extend beyond the current mission in Afghanistan?
From the Prime Minister's statements I'm never really sure any more.
Moreover, remember what the "saviors" of the forest industry - “Free Trade and Nafta” have done for British Columbia?
My program isn't Jack Layton's and I'm not proposing removing patent protection altogether - I'm just suggesting we employ some 'market forces' and a little less corporate welfare.