This was on my mind this morning because my girlfriend isn't rich and relies on Lunesta to sleep (I'll leave the fact that her doctor is advising her to take this indefinitely for another day). It's extortionately priced - something like $6 a pill - enough to gouge insurance companies thoroughly and enough to wreck havoc on the finances of someone that's not rich and lacks insurance.
It turns out, this is actually the most profitable drug in the world. Yet they can't even sell it in the EU because it's a modest derivative of a (generic) drug that's been around since 1989.
It's disturbing that this is where the patent game ends - with power-brokering and lawyering determining who gets the wealth and power.
Also, $180/month is not really what people mean by "high healthcare costs". They mean something like a $50,000/day hospital stay. $180 is a lot if you don't have a lot of money, but it's hardly backbreaking.
Indeed, and there's been much discussion that the chemistry that makes Lunesta patentable is trivial, basically a patent for its own sake.
"a single isomer drug rarely offers a therapeutic advantage over the mixture of isomers from which it is derived. However, the single isomer is patentable distinct from its multiple-isomer origin. Thus, the drug company can get a monopoly."
This was on my mind this morning because my girlfriend isn't rich and relies on Lunesta to sleep (I'll leave the fact that her doctor is advising her to take this indefinitely for another day). It's extortionately priced - something like $6 a pill - enough to gouge insurance companies thoroughly and enough to wreck havoc on the finances of someone that's not rich and lacks insurance.
It turns out, this is actually the most profitable drug in the world. Yet they can't even sell it in the EU because it's a modest derivative of a (generic) drug that's been around since 1989.
It's disturbing that this is where the patent game ends - with power-brokering and lawyering determining who gets the wealth and power.