Biotech Values

[jbog]

Generic Drugs, Biopharm:

"""I find it curious that anyone would willingly sacrifice the kind of cost savings to the heath care system that generic drug substitution provides. What would you propose we do to replace the savings generated by generic substitution? """

Generic's provide a very important role in our drug policy. I would think that a more logical policy would be to seperate the overhead and R&D portion of a drug from the cost of the drug and pay for them separately.

Take a drug like Lipitor for example. Our government together with our insurance programs would have been happy to kick in the hundreds of millions to research and develop the statin line of drugs.

On the other hand, no one at this point could produce Lipitor as efficient (on american soil) than Pfizer.