The Nursing Online Education Database has posted an article entitled, "25 Shocking Facts About the Pharmaceutical Industry."
Here's a part of their list. You can read the full entries by going to their site.
• The price of drugs is increasing faster than anything else a patient pays for.
• Your doctor may have an ulterior motive behind your prescription.
• Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than research.
• Brand name meds often have a 1,000% mark-up price.
• Drug reps often have no medical or science education.
• Pharmaceutical companies are helping, hurting the AIDS epidemics.
• Doctors can choose to reveal or keep private their prescription records.
• Good PR trumps patient care.
• Abbott Laboratories charged Medi-Cal nearly $10 for saline solution.
• Guilty of Medicare fraud: Pharmaceutical companies are also being tried in federal courts as an answer to their exploitation of Medicare.
• Combined wealth of top 5 pharmaceutical companies outweighs GNP of sub-Saharan Africa.
• Pfizer is fifth-best wealth creator.
• Americans pay more for prescription meds than anyone else in the world.
• "New" Drugs aren't really new:
• Some drug companies are taking advantage of underdeveloped countries to perform clinical trials.
For me, the only shocking thing was that it was easy to get to your website. I'm aware about another 50 or more shocking facts about Big Pharma and can't believe all "that" could have been done to the people here and around the world in the name of $$$ - their profit. In my opinion it's a crime against humanity, and it's time to reveal all secrets of the Big Pharma.
AIDS/HIV
CANCER
AUTISM
DIABETISM
OBESITY
you name it...
Gary:
A few comments
1) As much as we all hear about the "obscene" profits of the pharma industry, the AMEX pharmaceutical industry index has underperformed the S&P 500 for the last 1, 3, and 5 year periods. This is a little hard to explain if the profit margin on drugs is greater than can be justified by the risk of failure in development. Basically, if you are an investor in the pharma industry, in most cases you could have made more money investing in an S&P 500 index fund.
2) Gross profit margins are normally very high in industries that a high ratio of fixed relative to variable costs.
3) Only about 12.5% of US national health care expenditures are for pharmaceuticals (source: U.S. govt center for medicare and medicaid services). This is a lower fraction than in a basket of typical European countries and Canada. Our absolute prices are higher, but not to the degree most people think.
4) The primary source of the differential between US per capita expenditures on healthcare and those of European countries is the excess we spend on hospitalization and the salaries of healthcare providers (Source, Center for Medicare and Medicaid services). In fact, the US spends more on hospitalization and professional healthcare salaries per capita than most European countries spend per capita on all healthcare expenditures.
Posted by: John at March 29, 2008 06:02 PM