Summer Is Lyme Disease Season. The Price of the Drug to Treat It Just Exploded

[TalkingDog]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/summer-is-lyme-disease-season-but-the-price-of-the-cheap-drug-to-treat-it-just-soared/

Last night, this issue showed up in my Twitter feed. Dr. Judy Stone, who practices in western Maryland and Maine (and blogs at Scientific American) announced the price of the drug at her hospital community pharmacy had gone from $20 to $3,000.

On the other hand, last I checked, Canadian Online Pharmacies have it at regular price.

Wow. Ain't the American Health Care System Great.

[tridim]

1. My dog's epilepsy medication costs $10/pound...

When it comes in the form of "Photo processing chemicals", but when it's in the form of dog medication it costs 50 cents per pill. I bet the raw material for both forms comes from the exact same source. The drug is 90 years old and long since unpatentable.

Fuck you big pharma.

[sharp_stick]

3. It's not big pharma

when a drug is off patent it's time to start blaming the generics.

[tridim]

4. How does one go about blaming the generics?

I was under the impression that generic medication is produced in the same factories as non-generics.

[sharp_stick]

5. Oh no, it's separate

It has to be made to the same standards but not at the same factories.

Big Pharma, companies all produce their own medications. Smaller original research companies usually will contract their manufacturing for a fee or percentage to a big pharma. Small molecules have to be produced in separate facilities from the newer and wildly expensive biologics to the standards of each country that the medicine is going to be sold in. You can make a drug in Ireland and sell it in the US but only if the FDA has inspected and approved that plant. If you want to sell that in Japan the Japanese regulatory agency also has to inspect and approve the plant.

Pretty much as soon as generic competition is allowed the big pharma companies will stop or really reduce production and give the market place to the generics. They then gear up for the next medicines in the pipeline.

The generics companies have to produce the medication to the same regional standards at their own manufacturing facilities. Most of the big generic companies (TEVA, Apotex, Ranbaxy) have multiple manufacturing sites around the world, just like big pharma, to compete in each geographic area.

One of the problems that comes up with the much older and much cheaper medications is that everybody can make it and eventually it becomes less and less cost effective to keep it in bulk so they move closer to a just in time production. When one of the companies goes off-line due to an FDA order or a mechanical glitch all of a sudden there is a shortage. That's what happened with the cancer treatment version of methotrexate in the last year or so. One of the companies had to halt production because of problems found by the FDA and nobody else could ramp up production in time.

There was supposed to be a plan put in place to more quickly respond to these shortages but I don't know if they've been able to implement it yet.

[sharp_stick]

2. That's interesting

I wonder where the US pharmacies are getting it from?

Doxy has been generic for years, it looks like the manufacturers have been caught out for some reason.

The Canadian source seems to be UK I don't know why that wouldn't be available here? We pull meds from the UK all the time in Connecticut.

[FarCenter]

8. At least a couple of US manufacturers have discontinued production.

There are CDC and FDA notices on the shortages from last January/February.

Obviously the government can't do squat.

[indepat]

6. It's a shame our government doesn't have the power to nip this in the bud by acting

to promote the general welfare rather than to promote obscene corporate profit.

[FarCenter]

7. Get the compounded doxycycline from 1-800-pet-meds.

Alibaba lists a ton of Chinese manufacturers. Looks like the other major source is India.

It is used for malaria.