Tariffs and deregulation are sole and separate items.

Deregulation opens up the market to competitive pricing. Tariffs simply level the US domestic playing field for US companies to compete with offshore manufacturers who have the advantages of lower labor costs, less environmental regulation and the associated costs, and currency manipulation (e.g. Yuan/US$ Exchange rate).

So, if Irish manufactured Sofosbuvir (with tariffs) beat U.S., Indian, Bangladesh, etc. Sofosbuvir pricing, then insurance companies and health care providers would be free to buy Irish Sofosbuvir. US pharma manufacturers who have become fat and lazy though a captive market guaranteed by their bedfellows in congress and previous administrations would necessarily have to become more efficient to compete with the lowest cost suppliers, domestically and offshore – with a little home court advantage (within the US) to ensure they tend to stay home and don’t head to Ireland or Bangladesh to manufacture.

Additionally – what is being contemplated are selective tariffs which specifically target US companies who move production and jobs abroad in order to sell their products back to the US at a higher profit. In a ‘carrot and stick’ scenario, selective tariffs, and selective is the key word, are the ‘stick’.

The ‘carrot’ is a lowering of US corporate tax rates (currently among the very highest in the world) to among the lowest in the world to attract new capital, repatriate capital currently held offshore, fuel domestic economic growth and allow US companies to be more globally competitive.

Regardless of tariffs (unless they turn out to be ridiculously high) competition will drive prices downward – everywhere.

Hi Vororo,

I find the whole patent thing a bit strange now and it must be hard to work in companies like big pharma where the focus on developing something great, new and worthwhile, is suddenly changed to fart arseing around with mods to the drugs and using patents to get profits when you do.

I am typing this post on my 13 inch MacPro for which I understand Apple holds a patent for a rectangular aluminium case with round corners. My 27 inch iMac is with Apple Care as the bloody hinge is broken – a design fault probably made when Apple was looking after their patents rather then considering their cheap silly hinge was not strong enough to support the computer.

Another question is about charging what the market will bear – big pharma did this here in Aust and basically no one could afford it until eventually it was on the PBS. I suspect that over time this will be for a much reduced price anyway; not considering the year or so of lost sales because no one was buying.

Simple view I suppose.

Having used generics and the alleged real deal, I cannot fid the difference between them – aside from that Riba stuff being added in with retreatment. Using the PBS is obviously cheaper for me, but part of me still would prefer the government save themselves a quid, and give me (receipts have to be provided) a few thousand bucks and let me do my own thing with my doctor.

Just some thought from the again recently brain fogged and hopefully defogged.

Yours

Jeff

Realistically, prices will not change from Gileads side unless the intellectual property is literally taken from them, either by changing pharmaceutical patent laws to a much shorter expiration (this will also force innovation), or simply ‘commandeering the patents in the public interest through Eminent Domain.

What has happened in the US, and throughout the world is that taxpayer, and citizen bank accounts have been hijacked by Big Pharma via the public health mandate. The fundamental problem is not the insurance companies, or exchanges, or what ever you call it where you live. It is what the insurance company and ultimately the consumer is forced to pay for.

Any answer to more affordable public/private health insurance must come fundamentally from pharmaceutical price reform, or more to the point – by bringing Big Pharma patent and price abuse to a drop dead halt.

Yes, GreedFighter, I believe you describe the sad but realistic truth of it.

If only there was a way to combine professional medical consultations with guaranteed supply-chain integrity (as demonstrated by FixHepC) and make that available on-line everywhere in the world … ?

The problem is – for obvious reasons – Big Pharma would like us to believe that all intellectual property is equal. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No one ever died for lack of a licensed copy of a Led Zeppelin CD, or because they couldn’t afford the latest version of Microsoft Windows 10. People are dying every day because insurers, health care providers, and individual patients simply can’t afford to pay the extortionate pricing required for lifesaving medications.

There are now round the clock public service ads from the US Centers for Disease Control urging baby boomers to get tested for Hep C (paraphrasing here) ‘before it is too late’. The irony is, that once tested most won’t qualify for treatment.

At what point does abusing one’s intellectual property rights to extort the public become outright murder? Even genocide? The answer I believe is clear. It happens on a massive scale, every day – and no one so much as lifts a finger, or bats an eye.

The rare exceptions are right here. We – at FixHepC – as group have refused to accept decline, illness and eventually death in mindless deference to insatiable corporate greed.

The nature of pharmaceutical patents can be redefined – at any time. Any country which collectively chooses to do so can define the way it treats pharmaceutical patents. Take China for example… or now Moldova, or Bangladesh, or Egypt. Or the US after January 20th 2017 (that is only a hope at this point).

There is also precedence for Eminent Domain in the public interest. To my knowledge it has never been applied with regard to intellectual property, but what better case than a drug like Sofosbuvir which one could easily compare to Penicillin, or Polio Vaccine.

‘Intellectual Property’ isn’t about innovation or creativity. It is the second word in the phrase which clearly defines what it is about. Ownership.

I don’t have a problem with patents. In most cases they work reasonably well in protecting someone’s hard work from exploitation. So Frootle get to protect their round edged iThings and we get the choice of those or Samtel’s sharp edged Spamdroid devices. There is choice of brand and because these are toys/tools rather than essential lifesavers we want them rather than need them so the prices are constrained by competition which circumvents exploitation by excessively greedy bastards.

Medicine is different, it is necessary to our health and wellbeing and in many cases a medication is specific or ‘breakthrough’ for the disease and/or patient. (e.g. GT3s are not well served by Harvoni and/or Sofosbuvir is the backbone of HCV tx). This has allowed a situation where the patent goes beyond protecting IP and allows the excessively greedy bastards to exploit society as a whole while justifying their prices with bullshit spin about R&D costs and rewarding themselves with $400 million per year for doing so. ick:' />

I’m not certain what the full answer is here? Perhaps some sort of process where medicines that are deemed “Lifesaving” by the WHO or other designated body can be manufactured by any suitable Quality & GMP compliant company as a generic with some form of regulated licensing fees payable to the Patent holder? This may provide the necessary competition to control pricing and still provide adequate reward to the patent holder by the sheer volume of sales.

“any sense of stewardship or public responsibility”

This sums the problem up. And it seems to be an international problem that isn’t just restricted to the pharmaceutical industry. It is represented at its best (worst) by those members of boards of listed companies who feel it appropriate to reward themselves with packages of >$400 million per year as I commented earlier. Justified to shareholders by the improved performance they achieve (which is often illusory juggling) and often retained when things slump because that was “outside their control”.