The Truth About The Drug Companies: Blog 5 (end of book)

              After reading this book I am sad to see how even American’s health can be blatantly put at risk by big companies just so that they can make more money. The even worse part about everything is how people are unable to question things for themselves. The worse part of my book was when they compared the real drugs to placebos. Over 80% of the time the placebos worked just as effectively as the drug (this number was comparing Zoloft an anti-depressant). It just makes me want to shake people and say “just take an Advil and tell yourself it’s an anti-depressant, it will work all the same!”. People today need to question things more and stop believing everything that people tell them. If there is one thing we have learned about human nature is that humans can be greedy, very greedy no matter what degree they have. If a drug company is going to give you a fat check just to tell people “here take this you will feel better” most people will take the check. Yes, there is always a possibility that people might sue but these companies have so much money and so many lawyers on hand that at the end of the trial they are still walking away with a big old smile on their faces. I also got the impression that American’s will buy anything if it is advertised right, and apparently they can get any disease if it’s advertised right too.

I believe that the totally no body rapper Lazy Boy said it the best…..

You know we have more prescription drugs now.
Every commercial that comes on TV is a prescription drug ad.
I can't watch TV for four minutes without thinking I have five serious diseases.
Like: "Do you ever wake up tired in the morning?"
Oh my god I have this, write this down. Whatever it is, I have it.
Half the time I don't even know what the commercial is:
people running in fields or flying kites or swimming in the ocean.
I'm like that is the greatest disease ever. How do you get that?
That disease comes with a hot chick and a puppy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJeNok-lTEw 

The Truth About The Drug Companies: Blog 4

         Although advertising plays a major roll in big name drug companies it’s hard to sell a product unless it has people to support it, those people would be the doctors who prescribe the medication. If a drug is not proven effective after several years of studies the companies will have incurred a pure debt to their company, unable to make any revenue off of a product that doesn’t work. Many times they pay even more people off into saying that the drug is reliable, if the company pushes the right domino over all of them will fall.
So who should they pay? The people who publish the journals; these people are critical in the life of a prescription drug because other doctors will read them and believe the information to be true. In most cases it is, but in some it takes years for doctors or the FDA to realize the real hazard.
            Another way to push your drug onto someone is to give them “free samples”, which really aren’t free because the cost is added onto the drug price, once the patient is hooked onto the drug it’s hard for them to simply stop taking them or to switch over to a different kind. If that does not work and the patient doesn’t simply ask for the drug because of an advertisement they saw then the only other option is to go directly to the source. The doctors are the number one way to get a product to sell, and if they aren’t selling it the companies are losing money. So how to the companies get them to sell their drug? Simple. Buy them lunch. “In many teaching hospitals, drug reps regularly provide lunch for interns and residents while standing buy to chat about their new drugs” (127).
             Big companies can’t show these costs in their year end income statements, so they put these costs into “selling and administration” but how much of these costs really are what they say they are? The cold hard truth is that these companies have been taking Americans wallets for a ride.

The Truth About Drug Companies: Blog 3

            What really makes a drug new? Most drugs on the market these days are called “me-too drugs” a drug that simply has taken the chemical formula from a pre-existing drug and altered it by a couple of molecules to make it new. The major question in this is which work better? Before drugs are approved by the FDA for sale they have to be proven effective, to prove this medical companies take a clinical trial group of young people (because they are proven to have less side effects, which makes the drug look better in the studies) and give many of them the real drug, the rest are given placebos. If the trial drug shows improvement in the patient compared to the placebo patients the drug is considered effective.
              Today there are hundreds of thousands of different drugs all meant to cure or improve the same condition. Many people believe that newer drugs are better because they are more advanced, but in reality these drugs are just more advertised. Many times “the older drugs are just safer, both medically and economically”(96). The book The Truth about the Drug Companies brings up a great point, what if the drugs in the trial phase are pinned against an older drug of the same kind instead of a placebo? This would narrow down the amount of drugs available to the public so that people could only choose from the best.
             It seems like the drug companies will do anything to allow their new drugs into the market but “are new drugs any better than the old ones? Are they worse? The worrying answer is that frequently we just don’t know. Too often, all we have is bias and hype”(114). From advertising to published medical journals it seems like the drug companies will say (or pay) anything for consumers to buy their product, even if it means putting the patients life at risk with a more dangerous drug than the cheap one that has been proven effective.

The Truth About Drug Companies: Blog 2

          Yes, it is a very long, difficult, and expensive process to allow new drugs onto the market; but “only 14% of the total”(55) drugs that are put into the market are really new because of how long of a process it is. The problem is that most “new drugs” are really only “me-too drugs (which) are made by big competing companies to undercut their competition”. (80) These drugs aren’t “new or innovative” like the companies tell us, but in reality they are just the same drugs with only a few molecules changes and are presented to be more effective than their competitors drug that you already have in your cabinet.
          So most drugs on the market are only me-too drugs, how do big companies come out with drugs that aren’t me-too drugs? Well, they buy them. “The National Institute of Health (NIH) carries out in universities, small biotechnology companies, or the NIH itself. About 90 percent of research is done by the NIH, in which the Drug companies buy later from them.”(57) This means that the actual cost of R&D is relatively low because they are buying old patents for a relatively cheap price. So the actual cost of R&D is much lower than the drug companies are telling us. So why are these drugs so expensive? Simple. Advertising. The amount that drug companies spend on advertising is triple the cost of R&D. Drug companies spend more money these days in trying to sell their product than they actually do researching it. It’s sad to see how greedy big corporations really are.

The Truth About Drug Companies: Blog 1

         The drug companies are ripping us off. We, the educated American’s, always knew that the companies as a collective were taking out wallets for a ride, but what we didn’t know was how much. Doctor Marcia Angell puts the big companies as a combined total, and as individuals, under the lamp to discover that not only have they been over pricing by double the amount but really over pricing U.S citizens by 6x the amount it would cost in a European country. “breast cancer drugs cost $360 a month in this country and only $60 in Germany”(18). Even House Representative Dan Burton told New York Times “Every woman in America aught to be mad as hell at the pharmaceutical industry, you can quote me on that”(18).
          While reading this book it made me so upset to compare American drug cost and European costs, after conversions. The government has a national health care stance yet, they are the leaders in allowing these prices to be set in our mixed market. The reason they allow such high prices is because they are getting paid. Every senator likes money so all the big drug companies have to do is write a check that will make the senator see eye to eye with them so they have their drugs on the shelves for the price they want. At the end of each year companies, by governments orders have to post their financial statements. If the companies are paying off government officials so that they have the bill they want passed how does no body notice that? Simple. They lie.

Illinois Abortion

I believe that Illinois should be a democratic/liberal state. In learning about Illinois current abortion laws I am disappointed with a state that I thought could not sink any lower from the corruption that it has already been disgraced with. I would like to see the abortions become more readily available for people no matter race, age, or social statues. I belive that it is too conservative in the loops that it makes expecting mothers jump through. In a complex time in their life having the burden to make their decision on whether or not to become a mother the last thing these women need is more stress in trying to find someone to complete the procedure and pay for it. If it was up to me the government health care would cover all of the costs except for the co-pay, and people could walk into the clinic and get an abortion right there on the stop with only minimal questions

Freakanomics=good book, you should read it.

Steven D. Levitt in his book Freakanomics stated “unwanted children have an increased risk of growing up to be criminals, and legalized abortion reduces the number of unwanted children. Consequently, legalized abortion lowers crime in the future.” I believe that if people do not want to have a child they should not be forced too. Having parental consent is not necessary for an abortion because it is their childs body and so they have a right to decide what tumors they do and do not want inside of them. It is important that the parents are aware of what is going on in the child’s life and that they always have a strong bond of communication. So the parents should be notified of anything that might put the childs health at risk, especially emotionally.

The biological father does not have to be informed because it is not pertinent information and if that person is the father they should be with their baby momma with or without notification because that would be the right thing to do. In many cases the mother does not know for sure who the father is, so it is irrelevant.