Indian drug company slashes crucial medicine prices by 76%

I'm not really sure how I should feel about this. I'd like medicine to be affordable by everyone. However, what I mainly get out of the article is that a company with little or no R&#38;D is simply reducing the price on drugs, which for them is mostly profit anyway. The drugs themselves are cheap to produce, right?<p>Somehow, I think we'd all benefit if we could get these companies involved in developing better medicines. Maybe reduce the price by 50% then take that additional pool of money and invest it into research within India, for example.<p>Another idea...We always hear how great the IIT's are, which I believe they are. Let's turn them into great research universities.<p>[Update]<p>It's interesting to see my post get upvoted and downvoted, which most won't see. My suggestions don't really seem that divisive. I simply think getting more people working on the problem with funding from existing sales seems like a better idea than just reducing drug costs. Additionally, I think involving other institutions rather than sending the money back to Big Pharma, might provide different insights into solving the problems.

From Times of India [1]:<p><i>"Cipla, which has 23 oncology drugs in its portfolio, has been able to offer the price advantage because of backward integration and reverse engineering, its chairman Y K Hamied told TOI"</i><p>I'm not sure what backward integration means, but the part about reverse engineering implies these are not drugs that they spent a large sum on R&#38;D. It makes the moral hazard of capitalism vs compassion less hazardous when you copy someone else's product.<p>[1] <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Cipla-may-cut-prices-of-other-cancer-drugs-too/articleshow/13004180.cms" rel="nofollow">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/C...</a>

I think one of the failings of the pharma industry is to incorporate both, production and R&#38;D. If R&#38;D would be done in the public sector and its results freely available industrial pharma could compete on an even level concentrating on churning out medication in huge numbers at the lowest price possible and piggy-backing on companies that actively do R&#38;D based on national laws that allow you do produce generica wouldn't be possible.<p>Of course, this is no silver bullet. There is no guarantee that research in the public sector is going to be as effective as in the private sector. Which makes me wonder why medical research is so unevenly distributed between the academic world and the industry in the first place.

The pharma and media industries are so similar. Both lobby governments for passing bills to support their business models. Both rely on questionable extensions to IP rights and make loud noises about how much money they lose on piracy and generics.<p>There has to be something fundamentally screwed up to have this much conflict of interest between public good and IP rights.

Even when some of these drugs are very expensive to produce and R&#38;D is expensive, some retail prices are in one word greedy.<p>Looking up a chemotherapy compound priced bulk online will show you how big of a markup these drugs are being sold at. For example: a quick search shows Everolimus costing USD1341.27 per gram to the public bulk, and one retail box of 30 - 0.010 gram tablets costing around 5,000 usd. And I honestly doubt the bulk chemical is being sold at a loss.<p>Now mind these aren't aspirins, but the only option to a slim chance of living for many people. Ideal for drugs companies since whoever can afford it will pay any outrageous price.<p>The problem has gotten big enough that now there are counterfeit chemo drugs being sold, and given this chemo compounds may or may not work for everybody it's hard to track them. That is another problem which may be solved by these companies by selling affordable drugs.

For me, issues like this raise the question: Does capitalism still make moral sense in a world where a large proportion of the population is so poor as to be unlikely to participate in the free market during their lifetime? Even at $150 per month, those drugs aren't in any way affordable for most without government funding.

I don't think that this will affect original (western) company. Most people who will choose Indian drug over original, simply can't afford it, even in their dreams. On the other hand, those who can easily afford it, will go for it over "fake" Indian one.

Good news, but over here it wont help. Third parties will turn 76% of the price drop into extra profit for themselves. The downside of a closed market where everyone is obligated to have health insurance and the health insurance companies have all the power they need.

A nice idea to get something back from such companies is to have them collect data of the patients and gave back to the original company/copyright owner etc.