Over 2/3 Patients Back Free Trade in Drugs
The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health recently released results from a survey that found that 80% of Medicare beneficiaries supported legalisation of drug re-importation if it would lower costs. The survey found strong support 68% of the public and 65% of retirees for legislation that would make it easier for people to buy prescription drugs from Canada. When given pro and con arguments (supporters say the proposal would lower prices for many people and opponents say it could lead to unsafe drugs being imported into the country), 63% of the public and 57% of retirees continue to express support.
Re-importation of goods, including medicines, within the European Union is perfectly legal and is known as parallel trade. Obtaining a product from one country where it is relatively cheap and selling it in a country where it is relatively expensive is the basis of all international trade and has been going on for thousands of years. Parallel trade of medicines under license, in particular, is a growth industry in Europe. Market share increased from 11% in 1999 to 17% in 2003.
Big Pharma has long relied on government enforced patent monopolies to ensure monopoly profits and its political influence has secured it an unusual degree of protectionist legislation in the US which it exploits it to the fullest. This allows it to achieve the highest industry operating profit margins regularly reaching 80%. Detailed financial analysis of the major Pharma corporations shows that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry sector in the world, with higher operating margins than even the technology, telecoms, oil or defence industries. Compare General Electric (GE), founded by Thomas Edison, a paragon of capitalism which today is the most valuable and innovative firm in the world, widely respected as a brilliantly managed firm and yet it achieves operating margins of 'only' around 15%, whereas the Big Pharma corporations average margins around 80%. How can the difference be explained? It is because GE operates globally in competitive, largely free markets, selling mainly to savvy private sector customers, whereas the Big Pharma corporations operate in government regulated markets, with high barriers to entry secured by thickets of government regulations and government-granted patent monopolies. Coupled with their products being largely purchased and paid for by politically controlled healthcare and government run bureaucracies financed, at great cost, by taxpayers. If the Pharmopoly acts like a monopoly, prices like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly, it sure ain't a duck.
Big Pharma - Pfizer, Merck, GSK, Astra Zeneca, Novartis and others derive a huge proportion of their profits directly from taxpayer funded socialised health care systems. Medicare in the U.S., the N.H.S. in the U.K. and the socialised health care systems of Europe's welfare states provide a direct pipeline for money to flow from the world's taxpayers to Big Pharma's operating profits. The patent monopolies lead to monopoly profits, which has created a global Pharmopoly secured by heavy regulatory barriers to market entry from innovative start-up companies. The pharmopolies exploit their dominant market positions by licensing innovative new drugs from young start-up bio-techs firms or by buying out promising bio-tech firms.
The drug companies' lobbyists still claim that high development costs necessitate monopoly protection, yet innovative products tend to come out of universities and the niche bio-tech firms rather than the lumbering marketing-orientated pharmopolies. Big Pharma spends more money on marketing then on research and development; it employs more sales support staff than research scientists and tends to direct its efforts towards me-too products with lawyers manipulating patent laws to extend its monopolies rather than innovation. All assisted by the army of political lobbyists which outnumbers the politicians.
The polls suggest that the public sees through the self serving claims of Big Pharma that re-importing medicines from Canada to the U.S. and intra E.U. trade will lead to counterfeit drug supplies funding terrorism and international crime. Such wild conjectures are aimed at cynically smearing licensed entrepreneurs freely trading across Europe and North America. A parliamentary select committee in the U.K. has launched an investigation into the malign influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medicine and healthcare costs. In the U.S. research highlights that the pharmaceutical industry spent $500m on political lobbying during the lead up to the last two presidential elections, dwarfing even the lobbying efforts of arms manufacturers who rely almost entirely on the largesse of taxpayer funded government contracts. Lobbying on this scale serves to corrupt the political process, ensuring that government legislation and spending on healthcare is directed towards enhancing Pharmopoly profits. Is it any surprise that in the face of that kind of pressure, President Bush recently signed into law the most expensive piece of legislation for the taxpayer in the history of prescription drug financing?
See also here.
Re-importation of goods, including medicines, within the European Union is perfectly legal and is known as parallel trade. Obtaining a product from one country where it is relatively cheap and selling it in a country where it is relatively expensive is the basis of all international trade and has been going on for thousands of years. Parallel trade of medicines under license, in particular, is a growth industry in Europe. Market share increased from 11% in 1999 to 17% in 2003.
Big Pharma has long relied on government enforced patent monopolies to ensure monopoly profits and its political influence has secured it an unusual degree of protectionist legislation in the US which it exploits it to the fullest. This allows it to achieve the highest industry operating profit margins regularly reaching 80%. Detailed financial analysis of the major Pharma corporations shows that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry sector in the world, with higher operating margins than even the technology, telecoms, oil or defence industries. Compare General Electric (GE), founded by Thomas Edison, a paragon of capitalism which today is the most valuable and innovative firm in the world, widely respected as a brilliantly managed firm and yet it achieves operating margins of 'only' around 15%, whereas the Big Pharma corporations average margins around 80%. How can the difference be explained? It is because GE operates globally in competitive, largely free markets, selling mainly to savvy private sector customers, whereas the Big Pharma corporations operate in government regulated markets, with high barriers to entry secured by thickets of government regulations and government-granted patent monopolies. Coupled with their products being largely purchased and paid for by politically controlled healthcare and government run bureaucracies financed, at great cost, by taxpayers. If the Pharmopoly acts like a monopoly, prices like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly, it sure ain't a duck.
Big Pharma - Pfizer, Merck, GSK, Astra Zeneca, Novartis and others derive a huge proportion of their profits directly from taxpayer funded socialised health care systems. Medicare in the U.S., the N.H.S. in the U.K. and the socialised health care systems of Europe's welfare states provide a direct pipeline for money to flow from the world's taxpayers to Big Pharma's operating profits. The patent monopolies lead to monopoly profits, which has created a global Pharmopoly secured by heavy regulatory barriers to market entry from innovative start-up companies. The pharmopolies exploit their dominant market positions by licensing innovative new drugs from young start-up bio-techs firms or by buying out promising bio-tech firms.
The drug companies' lobbyists still claim that high development costs necessitate monopoly protection, yet innovative products tend to come out of universities and the niche bio-tech firms rather than the lumbering marketing-orientated pharmopolies. Big Pharma spends more money on marketing then on research and development; it employs more sales support staff than research scientists and tends to direct its efforts towards me-too products with lawyers manipulating patent laws to extend its monopolies rather than innovation. All assisted by the army of political lobbyists which outnumbers the politicians.
The polls suggest that the public sees through the self serving claims of Big Pharma that re-importing medicines from Canada to the U.S. and intra E.U. trade will lead to counterfeit drug supplies funding terrorism and international crime. Such wild conjectures are aimed at cynically smearing licensed entrepreneurs freely trading across Europe and North America. A parliamentary select committee in the U.K. has launched an investigation into the malign influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medicine and healthcare costs. In the U.S. research highlights that the pharmaceutical industry spent $500m on political lobbying during the lead up to the last two presidential elections, dwarfing even the lobbying efforts of arms manufacturers who rely almost entirely on the largesse of taxpayer funded government contracts. Lobbying on this scale serves to corrupt the political process, ensuring that government legislation and spending on healthcare is directed towards enhancing Pharmopoly profits. Is it any surprise that in the face of that kind of pressure, President Bush recently signed into law the most expensive piece of legislation for the taxpayer in the history of prescription drug financing?
See also here.
