New Philly Weekly
my new Philly weekly column is up. It discusses the Eshoo-Barton amendment in the health care bill, which if left standing will ensure that people with breast cancer, MS, diabetes, and similar chronic, life-threatening diseases will continue to pay through the nose for biologic drugs for at least 12 years, and possibly forever.
What are biologics? Read the article, leave a comment if you like, and then come back, because there’s more.
After Jane Hamsher, cited in my piece, wrote a scathing article about Anna Eshoo’s amendment, the representative blew a gasket, denying that her bill provides such a give-away to the pharmaceutical industry. However, Hamsher:
double checked with a number of experts including Ethan Guillen, Executive Director of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), Chris Manz, UAEM student at Duke University, and Sarah Rimmington, Attorney at Essential Action., Access to Medicines Project. They’ve been working on this bill a long time too, and they all concur that Rep. Eshoo’s bill doesn’t say what she believes it does.
jane also found that:
Rep. Eshoo is also relying on some questionable data for other conclusions she reaches. For instance, she wants a 12 year data exclusivity period on biologic drugs, “which is the same amount of time that all drugs enjoy on the market under patent protection.”
I’m sure she’s not trying to be intentionally misleading, but conventional drugs get 5 years of “data exclusivity.” That’s not the same thing, as she takes pains to explain earlier in her post, as “patent protection.”
She says drug companies spend billions of dollars to bring biologics to market, and that it’s “necessary to allow some period of time to recoup the investment in developing the drug.”
But according to PhRMA’s own research, the average development cost for biologics is $1.2 billion, which is less than the $1.318 for conventional drugs (PDF).
In fact, earlier this year the FTC released a study which said biologics needed zero years of exclusivity to recoup their investment, and that the 12 years Rep. Eshoo proposes would stifle innovation and competition and keep drug prices high. They agreed with Congressman Waxman that Rep. Eshoo’s amendment would encourage firms to change formulas slightly and retain endless monopolies, rather than seek “new inventions to address unmet medical needs.”
So it looks like Eshoo’s got some explaining to do. Accountability, much?
