Morgan BellGenerics – The Cheap Medicines
January 3rd 2007 13:54
Do you think medicines are too expensive? Would you like to buy cheap generics instead? What implications would this have to the creation of new drugs? Read along on this topic.
The news today, 3 January 2007, is that “the chairman of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies has attacked generic drug manufacturers from the developing world for failing to focus on making medicines affordable in their own countries.”
“Jean-Francois Dehecq, the chairman of Sanofi-Aventis of France, said he was “scandalised” by generic groups producing low-cost medicines in poor countries to sell to patients in rich nations. Citing examples from India, Thailand and Indonesia, Mr Dehecq criticised generic companies for paying wages of “three times nothing” to employees in the developing world and then exporting rather than selling their low-cost medicines locally.”
“The US, as well as European governments and insurance funds, have encouraged greater use of generic medicines to cut medicines bills as the cost of healthcare grow.”
“Generic drugs are chemically equivalent to patented drugs, approved by regulators and sell at a significant discount to branded but off-patent drugs, which IMS, the healthcare statistics consultancy, estimates still account for 15 per cent of sales.”
“Mr Dehecq also attacked those people who criticised pharmaceutical companies for charging high prices for drugs, warning that lower prices would push them away from innovation. He said industry-sponsored estimates suggesting that each new drug cost $US1 billion ($1.27 billion) to develop were too low.”
This news was published in the online version of The Australian under the title “Pharma fury over export of generics” and was written by Andrew Jack.
The problem with medicines, in the West and elsewhere, is that they are too expensive. The government in Australia publicly promotes generics as a way to reduce health costs. The fact is that generics do just the same effect and are cheaper.
On the other hand, if developing countries can produce and sell in the West cheap generics, I will buy from them. I am for free trade and I see no problem with this.
Even South African AIDS sufferers would benefit from generics and they cannot afford braded medicines.
The only problem is that generic medicine producers do not do research and development. That is done by the Western pharmaceutical companies, and it sure is costly, who then try to recover their costs from the price of medicines.
The patent mechanism is aimed at protecting this very need to recover costs. I envisage that if there could be an innovative system of licensing to generics producers then research and development would be feasible to the West.
Otherwise we might just run out of new and better drugs for our current maladies.
End
The news today, 3 January 2007, is that “the chairman of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies has attacked generic drug manufacturers from the developing world for failing to focus on making medicines affordable in their own countries.”
“Jean-Francois Dehecq, the chairman of Sanofi-Aventis of France, said he was “scandalised” by generic groups producing low-cost medicines in poor countries to sell to patients in rich nations. Citing examples from India, Thailand and Indonesia, Mr Dehecq criticised generic companies for paying wages of “three times nothing” to employees in the developing world and then exporting rather than selling their low-cost medicines locally.”
“The US, as well as European governments and insurance funds, have encouraged greater use of generic medicines to cut medicines bills as the cost of healthcare grow.”
“Generic drugs are chemically equivalent to patented drugs, approved by regulators and sell at a significant discount to branded but off-patent drugs, which IMS, the healthcare statistics consultancy, estimates still account for 15 per cent of sales.”
“Mr Dehecq also attacked those people who criticised pharmaceutical companies for charging high prices for drugs, warning that lower prices would push them away from innovation. He said industry-sponsored estimates suggesting that each new drug cost $US1 billion ($1.27 billion) to develop were too low.”
This news was published in the online version of The Australian under the title “Pharma fury over export of generics” and was written by Andrew Jack.
The problem with medicines, in the West and elsewhere, is that they are too expensive. The government in Australia publicly promotes generics as a way to reduce health costs. The fact is that generics do just the same effect and are cheaper.
On the other hand, if developing countries can produce and sell in the West cheap generics, I will buy from them. I am for free trade and I see no problem with this.
Even South African AIDS sufferers would benefit from generics and they cannot afford braded medicines.
The only problem is that generic medicine producers do not do research and development. That is done by the Western pharmaceutical companies, and it sure is costly, who then try to recover their costs from the price of medicines.
The patent mechanism is aimed at protecting this very need to recover costs. I envisage that if there could be an innovative system of licensing to generics producers then research and development would be feasible to the West.
Otherwise we might just run out of new and better drugs for our current maladies.
End
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