The Boston Globe explains the latest drug-company scam: AstraZeneca, who manufacture the anti-acid-reflux med Prilosec, are running an advertising blitz to get sufferers to switch to Nexium, their new proton-pump inhibitor. Thought Nexium and Prilosec do pretty much the same thing (as do a couple of other, cheaper meds), AstraZeneca is panicked that Prilosec's patent has expired (though they've managed to wrangle a few more years' worth of monopoly by gaming the USPTO), and so they're spending millions to migrate their end-users to a new, hyper-expensive version.
First things first: This prescription drug crisis you hear everyone squawking about – it's really so avoidable. We Americans are on pace to spend nearly $200 billion on our meds this year. That's more than the federal government paid last year for education, agriculture, transportation, and the environment combined. It matches the highest prediction of what it would cost to topple Saddam Hussein with a full-scale attack on Iraq. Talk about a war on drugs. In any rational world, that sum would not just cover our current pill habit but would also allow us to pick up the drugstore tab for all those senior citizens paying out of pocket for their high blood pressure and arthritis pills. We could spare them the indignity of those Greyhound-bus narc-runs to Canada to score their cut-rate Cardizem and Celebrex.
Who's responsible for the fact that prescription drug spending continues to rise 15 to 20 percent a year, doubling every five years? The big pharmaceuticals have certainly lost much of their "best and the brightest – making life better for you" luster. That's perhaps inevitable when you pour more money into peddling your newest product than Nike does its sneakers. But there's plenty of blame to go around. The government allows drug companies to control the testing of new drugs, designing trials to suit their interests, not the consumers'. HMOs and hospitals, under their own bottom-line pressures, make deals that help the drug manufacturers move patients to new, expensive drugs when cheaper, older ones might do fine. Doctors operate in a world where drug maker freebies like Red Sox tickets, Four Seasons dinners, and Arizona golf outings somehow seem normal instead of the outrageous graft they are.
(via Plastic)
