The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices

Re:The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices by dpark on Thursday March 30, 2017 @12:32PM (#13996827)

> There are many very cheap ways of keeping physicians up-to date, such as a conference presentation of the drug, followed by a Q&A session, with a recording freely available online.

Because most doctors are happy to spend hours watching recordings of drug presentations.

For better or worse, doctors are just people and if you want them to understand the benefits of your new drug, it will fall to you to convince them. Most doctors are not going to thoroughly study every new drug.

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Re:The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices by evgen on Thursday March 30, 2017 @02:32PM (#13997758)

> Because most doctors are happy to spend hours watching recordings of drug presentations.

And yet somehow I am supposed to be overjoyed at spending hours watching conference talks, reading blog posts and documentation, and doing other things to evaluate new tech and learn new languages/libraries that are not my direct job just to keep up to date on my rapidly-changing industry?

Welcome to the 21st century doctors. I would unpack and play the worlds tiniest violin for you, but I have a few more confreaks youtube videos to plough through right now.

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Re:The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices by dpark on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:04PM (#13999703)

I'm kind of impressed that you managed to turn this into an opportunity to whine about your own continuing education.

Also, just FYI doctors already have to do continuing education to maintain a license, which cuts into the time they can spend researching new drugs.

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Re:The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices by DanBC on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:13PM (#13999762)

There are only about 20 - 30 "new molecular entities" approved each year. These are the ones that need most focus.

How could that information be delivered to doctors without unduly influencing them or overwhelming them with junk info?

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Re:The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices by dpark on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:39PM (#13999927)

I don't know, honestly, but hand waving and saying doctors should all take the initiative to self educate won't do it. Maybe they should, but many likely won't.

The only thing I can think is to make it mandatory continued education. But even that is iffy. Part of the problem is that there's just not that much additional data on new drugs. By definition the FDA thinks the drug is safe (relatively) and effective so what's the education going to look like and who's going to put it together?

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