Novartis is a global pharmaceutical company. They developed a drug to treat leukaemia called Gleevec which in the US currently costs around $100,000 per year, which is fine if you have medical insurance, not so much if you dont. They justify the price due to the cost of years of research and bringing the drug to market. Hypothetically the drug should be cheaper when patents have expired and other pharmaceutical companies can make the drug without having to cover the billions of dollars in r&d. The truth is the drug used to cost much less, and AFTER they had made the costs back they tripled the cost of the drug. Their next move is to pay-to -delay other pharmaceutical companies from making generic versions of the drug, basically they will pay the companies to not produce the drug, and this will still be profitable for them. These are the companies responsible for peoples health, the ones that everyone pins hopes of a miracle on, but they consistently place their medications out of the reach of sick and dying people. Novartis is a huge pharmaceutical company in the UK too. I wonder how much we really know about the business and politics of healthcare? Its pretty obvious that people never getting ill/being easily cured would lose some very rich and powerful people a lot of money.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 01:05:15 +0000
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