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Originally Posted by 1andrew1
Why don't other companies like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Pfizer enter the market then, assuming great profits are to be had if there are monopoly providers setting prices?
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From my previous link
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3. Pay-for-Delay Schemes & Lawsuits
A ‘Pay for delay’ agreement is a patent dispute settlement in which a generic (in the case of insulin, a biosimilar) manufacturer acknowledges the original patent of a pharmaceutical company and agrees to refrain from marketing its product for a specific period of time. In return, the company receives a payment from the patent-holder. This means it is actually legal for one insulin producer to pay another one not to enter the market. A few years ago the company Merck announced plans to sell a biosimilar version of Sanofi’s Lantus. Sanofi sued, and eventually Merck announced that it was no longer pursuing it’s biosimilar, presumably due to payments from Sanofi to stay away. If Pay for delay schemes don’t work, the ‘big three’ can still sue other players, prolonging processes and pushing players out of the market because of legal fees and time-wasting. All of these are win-wins for companies, and lose-lose for patients.
4. Patents
Why aren’t we seeing more companies making insulin? There are many reasons for this, but patent evergreening is a big one. Patents give a person or organization a monopoly on a particular invention for a specific period of time. In the USA, it is generally 20 years. Humalog, Lantus and other previous generation insulins are now off patent, as are even older animal based insulins. So what’s going on? Pharmaceutical companies take advantage of loopholes in the U.S. patent system to build thickets of patents around their drugs which will make them last much longer (evergreening). This prevents competition and can keep prices high for decades. Our friends at I-MAK recently showed that Sanofi, the maker of Lantus, is no exception. Sanofi has filed 74 patent applications on Lantus alone, that means Sanofi has created the potential for a competition-free monopoly for 37 years.
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---------- Post added at 12:43 ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
Well, that was the implication. As for whether they are over-priced, perhaps they are. But like most things, the reasons for that perception may not take account of all the facts.
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That’s
your implication, not (necessarily*) his.
I read from it that it was to be produced at low/reasonable profit margin - differing views provide different implications.
My brother-in-law currently works as a research VP for a US biosimilar company, and has been on medical drugs research for nearly 40 years (including over 20 years as a research Director/VP at Pfizer and Teva, two of the biggest drugs companies in the world), and he said that Insulin is used by the 3 drug companies as a cash cow, as the manufacturing costs haven’t risen that much in the last 20 years, but the market price has increased by 8-10 times the original price in 2000.
(*
I’m not a mind reader, so it’s only my interpretation of his interpretation...)