News

Last week, a new study said that Big Pharma (the nickname for the major drug companies) showed a pattern of withholding or manipulating drug information as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was reviewing a medication which could be a big money-maker for one of them.

That research was troubling—-doctors don’t know what they don’t know about medications as yet too new to have a track record.

Now there appear to be predatory drug pricing practices on a scale large enough to provoke the outrage of the European Union. Billions of dollars of outrage.

The European Union (EU) is accusing some drug companies of costing patients an estimated $3.8 billion between 2000 and 2007—-five percent of the total cost of medical bills for EU members for that time period.

Most important, leading scientists need to recommend how to deal with the fraud these companies have committed clinically and financially. How can patients learn whether their medicines really are as represented? That they know risks associated with a medication before taking it? Patients have a right to know.

What kind of review system can work? How fast? Only experts can tell us and they need to tell us fast.

New York Times

” The European Union accused drug companies on Friday of adding billions of dollars to health care costs by delaying or blocking the sale of less expensive generic medicines.

“One common tactic, said Neelie Kroes, the European competition commissioner, was for drug companies to amass patents to protect active ingredients in the medicines — in one case, 1,300 patents for a single drug. Another tactic, she said, was for pharmaceutical companies to sue the makers of generic drugs for ostensible patent violations, which tended to delay the availability of the lower-cost products for years.

“Ms. Kroes made her comments Friday while presenting the preliminary findings of a broad investigation into accusations of anticompetitive practices in the drug sector. She also turned her sights on the generics companies, which she said had received $200 million from pharmaceutical companies over seven years in exchange for holding their products off the market.

“Patients and health care systems in Europe would have saved at least 3 billion euros, or $3.8 billion, from 2000 to 2007 — or shaved 5 percent off the medical bills — if companies had let generics into the market sooner, she said. (Emphasis added)

“She did not identify the companies and did not say legal action was imminent. But she did say that European officials “will not hesitate to open antitrust cases against companies where there are indications that the antitrust rules may have been breached.”

Source: New York Times, November 28, 2008