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Title: Medical Nemesis
Author: Kevin Carson
Date: April 14, 2005
Language: en
Topics: Health Care
Source: Retrieved on 4th September 2021 from https://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/04/medical-nemesis-or-follow-money.html

Kevin Carson

Medical Nemesis

Alternet has an interview with Dr. Richard Deyo, who co-authored Hope or

Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False

Promises. Some excellent bits of analysis, although (like a typical

goo-goo) he gets the big picture wrong.

The problem with me-too drugs is a big one. Me-too drugs are chemically

very similar to other drugs already available, yet they are typically

marketed as if they were important new breakthroughs, and typically with

very high prices. We found in many cases that new, expensive me-too

drugs are not necessarily better than older generic and less expensive

drugs. Because new and heavily marketed drugs seem like they must be

better, manufacturers can command higher prices. That is an important

driver of drug costs.

The central factor in this process is the state’s patent policies, which

drastically inflate the profitability of the newer “me, too” drugs

against much cheaper competitors that do very nearly the same thing.

Indeed, the patent process has a huge distorting effect on R&D, since it

results in so many resources being channelled into tweaking existing

drugs just enough so that they can be re-patented as “new.” Then the

drug reps hit every hospital and clinic in America, drop off some free

samples and pamphlets, and (most M.D.s relying on drug industry handouts

for their information on the new drugs that have come out since they

left med school) the “me, too” drug becomes the new standard form of

treatment.

The state having created the “honey pot” with its patent system, it is

quite predictable that the state-enforced drug cartels and the

white-coat Mafia (medical licensing boards with their mainly

pharma-influenced “standards of practice”) should drive the industry

toward a model focused on these high-cost drugs, and crowd out low-cost

alternatives.

Any doc who (say) recommends Co-Enzyme Q-10 as a first recourse against

congestive heart failure, or attempts some other low-cost departure from

the drug-‘em-and-cut-‘em model, had better remember the state licensing

board has its eye on him. Even stipulating that patents themselves are

legitimate (which they are not), this latter practice has the effect of

outlawing one of the most important defenses against monopoly: what

Schumpeter called “product-substitution.”

The fact that the authors’ proposed response to this state capitalist

sewer is even more state intervention (finessing the FDA approval

process, more regulation of advertising, more procedural oversight of

research), rather than eliminating the forms of state intervention that

create the honey-pot in the first place, is mind-boggling. It’s like

looking at one of those Rube Goldberg inventions.

Speaking of inventions.... One of the best regular features on MST3K was

the weekly “Inventions” segment. My favorite was a treadmill with

motorized wheels on the bottom, just in case you felt like moving around

outside while you were walking. But with big government liberals making

proposals like these, it’s hard for the farceurs on the Satellite of

Love to compete.