Advising a parent to torture a child over food is piss poor advice to start with but when the parent has identified possible autism, you realise you know less than nothing and shut the fuck up.
JoBo
joined 2 years ago
That's a mind-numbingly obvious point which completely ignores the context, which is Pharma justifying their high prices based on the amount they spend on R&D.
The rest of the world gets drugs 2-3x cheaper than the US. Do you imagine they're selling at a loss to everywhere else?
None of that is a reason for them being allowed to extract a scarce resource for free.
I don't know which jurisdiction you're in but, while it isn't illegal in the UK, you're absolutely right about it being a bad idea and you are correct about the reason. In the event of a crash, it could count against you (in the UK, at least).
It doesn't cost that much because the company are making a hefty profit, of course. And much more profit off it in the US as per usual, the NHS pays considerably less
The deal struck [in 2021] with Novartis Gene Therapies, secures the drug for NHS patients in England at a substantial confidential discount and paves the way for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to publish draft guidance recommending treatment with Zolgensma.
The terms of the deal mean that some young children that currently fall outside the NICE recommendation criteria will also be eligible to be considered for treatment by a national multidisciplinary clinical team (MDT) made up of the country’s leading experts in the treatment of SMA.
This means as many as 80 babies and young children could potentially benefit from the life-changing gene therapy a year.
But profiteering aside, the number in the final paragraph is your answer. Up to 80 kids in the UK per year, so up to ~400 in the US, ~500 for the EU. It's not a big market but the cost of drug development doesn't get cheaper just because the number of cases is small, it gets more difficult and more costly. And there's more than one drug company chasing the market.
None of that is a defence of Pharma. But it is inevitable under capitalism. Eat the rich etc etc.
What percentage would be right?
Given that they're using the cost of R&D to justify their prices? A lot more than 21%.
The rest of the world gets much lower prices. That's not out of the goodness of their hearts or the generosity of their wallets, yaknow?
So the fuck what?
What did you think this bit meant?
(He’s likely on the spectrum.)
I don't disagree with your overall argument but, if they're fined 100% of revenue, that's way less than zero profit (because they've still paid to make, distribute, and recall the things).
Fines should, of course, always be more than the profit made. 3x is a good number.
I don’t think we’d ever get real safety statistics about companies in China.
China cares a great deal about its exports, and the testing by ANCAP / NCAP / NHSTA is the same in those export markets. Their safety record is not something they can hide. BYD alone is outselling Tesla, so there will be a large volume of real world data coming along shortly. The NHSTA is too gutless to make Musk share the data but they won't be so shy with Chinese brands.
The event is called the Madrid Open.
They've been working on this for years, an opportunity to schism gracefully was offered in advance. In the UK, they've allowed individual congregations to decide what can happen in their church building(s), and individual clergy to opt out of officiating.