Is Novartis profiteering from the NHS?

An interesting ID popped-up yesterday with a comment that needs some reflection and debate:


Re: Novartis, Scum! said...

"How do you guys feel about Novartis taking legal action against four NHS trusts for using a cheaper drug to treat macular degeneration? Isn't this further proof of big pharmas' greed? Us MSers are a cash cow, as are all ill people. The money is not to cure people, merely to treat them with expensive drugs. If we don't pay, we don't get. Is this not why Fampridine is out of most of ours' reach?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9719000/9719186.stm"

"May be and may be not! Pharma is a business its major incentive is  to make money. Most Pharma companies are listed and therefore have shareholders; the major pharma shareholders are pension funds. Therefore, possibly your pension and some of mine depends on them doing well. In addition, pharma pay a large amount of money in tax. Our government does very well out of pharma; the pharma industry is ~6% of the UK's GDP. The development costs of novel drugs is so large and risky that Pharma is the only workable model for developing drugs. Usually the pay-back for risk is big profits. If we don't reward risk we don't get any risk-takers. The pharma industry is no exception.

Who created the beast? We did - do we have a right  to complain?

So if you take a macro-economic view of pharma it is in everybody's interest that Pharma does well. The issue here is getting the balance right between reasonable and unreasonable profits and reasonable and unreasonable behaviour. I am not sure what the correct answer is. If we erode the incentives for developing new drugs we reduce the chances of getting new drugs for MSers. What we need is some give and take! There is no easy solution.

I wish Pharma didn't have such a bad reputation; it makes it difficult for them." 

"What do you think?"

Labels: ,