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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9985

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Light DW, Lexchin J.
Foreign free riders and the high price of US medicines.
BMJ 2005 Oct 22; 331:(7522):958-60
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/331/7522/958


Abstract:

The US government, backed by the pharmaceutical industry, wants to convince Americans that they’re paying more for drugs because they’re contributing more than their fair share of the costs of research and development. Not so, argue two researchers who have looked at the evidence.

Introduction
The United States government is engaged in a campaign to characterise other industrialised countries as free riding on high US pharmaceutical prices and innovation in new drugs.1 This campaign is based on the argument that lower prices imposed by price controls in other affluent countries do not pay for research and development costs, so that Americans have to pay the research costs through higher prices in order to keep supplying the world with new drugs.1 2 Supporters of the campaign have characterised the situation as a foreign rip-off.3 We can find no evidence to support these and related claims, and we present evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, we explain why the claims themselves contradict the economic nature of the pharmaceutical industry.

Origins of the campaign
The campaign, strongly backed by the pharmaceutical industry, seems to have started in the late 1990s as a response to a grass roots movement started by . . .

The free rider myth
Lower prices do not lead to less research
Europe no less innovative than the US
Limited investment in breakthrough research

Misusing economic theory
Conclusions

Keywords:
Publication Types: Review MeSH Terms: Biomedical Research/economics Drug Costs* Drug Industry/economics* Economics, Pharmaceutical Europe Humans Research Support/economics United States


Notes:

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