this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
347 points (97.8% liked)

News

23310 readers
5070 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

america is so fucking based man

in any proper country that company at least gets forced to pay by the government then ordered to shut down forever due to wanton cruelty. all the employees get generous severance except whoever made that call. depending upon your view of carceral punishment there are a few ways to go with that guy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Drug R&D is expensive, but it's only 21% of the top 15 Pharmaceutical companies' revenue. And that number is actually misleadingly high because it actually includes some actions that are just meant to help advertise the drugs.

Source

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I really don't want to defend pharma but that study is a bit dubious.

There's a bunch of issues but the most obvious is simply that a percentage of turnover is meaningless.

What percentage would be right?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You've missed my point.

The percentage of total expenditure spent on R&D is not in any way indicative of the cost of R&D compared to the sale price of a given medication.

Quite simply, maybe the majority of a company's turnover is manufacturing licensed or generic meds. No R&D required.

Does the remaining 21% equate to $2m or $2b, and how many new medications did they create with that expenditure?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

a mind-numbingly obvious point

Yet completely lost on you ?

If a company spends $2b on research each year and after 5 years brings a new medication to market which is only useful for 1 person in every billion, how much should that company sell that medication for and how is it relevant that the company "only" spent 21% of it's revenue on research? That company could still say that the medication is costly due to research costs and the claim would be true.

I'm not saying pharma companies aren't shady as fuck, I'm just saying that complaining about the percentage of their revenue spent on research is absurd.

The rest of the world gets cheaper medications because the medical system in the US is just a mess.

That said, some medications are still preclusively expensive outside the US "due to research".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Good grief. You don't need to wave your hands so wildly, this is really fucking simple maths. Expenditure which is 21% of the total cannot possibly be the reason why USians pay 2-3 times more than everywhere else for drugs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sorry chief. I don't think I can dumb it down any more for you. Good luck with that.