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A comment on Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lead poisoning drug. Parent comment

Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by fabian2k on Sunday October 23, 2016 @03:55PM (#12775137)
This deserves some emphasis. This is the kind of chemical you just have around in the lab in a 1kg package. I just checked, and 1kg was around 150EUR from Sigma Aldrich.

The medical version this is about are 5 ampules of 1g each. And those 5 ampules cost nearly 27,000 USD.

The cost of the EDTA itself is a rounding error in the whole thing. Of course the comparison is not fair, there is quite a bit more to creating a drug out of it. But increasing the price from 950 USD to 26900 USD can't really be justified by any underlying costs.

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Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by pkaye on Sunday October 23, 2016 @03:58PM (#12775151)
Are there no competitors making the medical version?
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Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by HarryHirsch on Sunday October 23, 2016 @04:26PM (#12775255)
No. The market is so small that for low-volume generics there is usually just one manufacturer. There's also the moat for competitors to surmount, they must prove equivalency of their galenic form, a certification that the incumbent already has had for decades.
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Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by barry-cotter on Monday October 24, 2016 @01:16AM (#12776858)
Another way of looking at it is that this is the FDA's fault. If the US Congress were to pass a law permitting importation of (generic) drugs from other first world countries with competent drug regulators this problem would not exist.

This is exactly the same thing as happened with Martin Shkreli, as is happening at the moment with nitroglycerin for heart problems and it's all the FDA's fault.

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Re:Congressman calls for probe into Valeant’s pricing of lea... by pkaye on Sunday October 23, 2016 @06:10PM (#12775666)
Seems much like countries have strategic oil reserves they need strategy sourcing of medicines. Make sure there are multiple suppliers and negotiate long term deals.
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