[ale] Incompetent corporate web sites (was: Ubuntu Linux ROCKS!)

[Greg Freemyer]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 10:46 AM,  <mmillard1 at comcast.net> wrote:
> $ appauls me to the core that pills that save peoples lives cost 25¢ in
> Mexico and hundreds here because pharmacists can charge hundreds of dollars
> here. If the government wanted to do something to help us Cap Pharmacy
> prices at 1000% markup. I don't like the idea of Health.care and life in
> general being a profit margin but it is and always has been.

I don't claim to know the details, but the issue is:

$1B to create / test / get approved a new drug.

$0.05 to manufacture a pill.

You sell a few million pills in the first world and a few million in
the third world.

How do you recover the $1B.

Current solution is you get 1st world healthcare to cover R&D and
charge just a little over the marginal production cost to the third
world.

So you can be appalled, but effectively it is the 1st world
distributing healthcare aid to the 3rd world.  That does not appall me
at all.

Now if your real issue is that they recover $1.5B for every $1B they
spend, then that is a different matter.  But I have no idea what the
ROI is for drug companies.  But, I don't think it is anywhere near
150%.  Yes, there are exceptions (like viagra) where the drug company
makes billions off of a single successful drug, but that is the rare
exception.

Greg