Pharmaceutical Patent Enforcement in the Developing World

[a_cubed]

Claim by pharmaceutical companies:

Allowing cheap generic production of new drugs for use in the developing world would destroy their ability to do research and development by removing their income stream, because of grey imports back from those countries into the developed world where their patent runs.


Thoughts:

Assuming this is the honest argument, and it isn't just the more politically acceptable argument than "we demand maximum profit, even if this means that lots of people in developing countries suffer and die", then the following thought occurs:

Is the grey import problem principally a factor of the lack of a proper government funded health system in the US? In the UK, for instance, if we agree to honour global pharma patents then the NHS will not be allowed to source prescription drugs from the third world. Since the vast majority of patented drugs in the UK are prescribed by the NHS, this should be sufficient protection of the income stream of pharma companies - anything else would be beyond the point of diminishing returns at the margins. In most other developed countries, so far as I'm aware, there is not a substantial underclass of people without access to necessary drugs.

So, is this a factor in the skewing of the worldwide debate on pharma patent enforcement?

Comments

[stuartc.livejournal.com]

I certainly wouldn't disagree with your premise that the lack of government funded healthcare could be the root cause of the feared grey import market into the US. I do wonder however if the bulk of the financial loss would be caused by the uninsured masses buying the cheapest drugs they can find, or if it would simply be the big private healthcare providers simply buying the cheap generic equivalents to maximise their profit margins.

[galtine1.livejournal.com]

I hate to be a curmudgeon, but I see it as Big Business trying to recoup their research costs as quickly as possible with the insane prices they charge for medicines when they first hit the market. And denying cheap versions to 3rd world nations is one way to control their patents/profits.

Additionally, Insurance Cos make things hard with either their multi-level co-payments based on the age of the drug, how much it's prescribed to the entire market, and the expected life of your script (ie: seasonal, one time or life support). I've watched co-pays go from $0 to $15 for the Tylenol3 for a month's supply to $30 or more for antibiotics for 10 days.

Now, would *I* pay for a grey-drug coming back to the US? Not under my current circumstances. I'd rather find black-market US-produced drugs. These are usually unfinished prescriptions of deceased family members that get turned in to either their Dr or a support organization who then quietly gets the drug into the hands of someone who is uninsured.

Oh, and to support the claim of this really being "all about the money" -- 80% of the OTC drugs out there are under-dated for their lifespan. If kept in correct conditions, most OTC drugs can last 2x their shelf life date mark. This encourages you to toss out the aspirin or antacids and buy new even though they are still at full effectiveness.

And as this is all jaded from an American POV with three family members in three very different medical conditions that require obscene (street value) amounts of meds for daily living, take it with a box of salt.

Individuals and Organisations

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

I can see that for-profit HMOs (and even non-profits, with a different motive - helping more people with their limited resources) might find this a tempting thing to do. However, the reason this never used to happen (and remember, India in particular had a thriving generics drug manufacturing industry which used to ignore the patents issue until TRIPS) is that HMOs are sufficiently large to be sued and have sufficient funds for a suit to be worthwhile either for the government or for the patent holder. The problem with trying to do this for individuals is that there are too many of them and it's impractical to sue them individually, although in a parallel situation the recording companies are trying to do this, anyway.