A new study finds that older, cheaper diabetes drugs control blood sugar as well, with somewhat less harmful side effects, than newer, more expensive ones. In a sane health care system, this would mean a rush to prescribe these older agents, or at least to gather more data on the subject. In our health care system, where doctors take tens of thousands from pharmaceutical companies and patients are bombarded with advertising to make them think they want, or know they want, certain drugs, the more expensive, no more effective, compounds will almost certainly remain atop the market. There's simply no incentive for doctors to switch over, but plenty of incentive for them to prescribe the more costly drugs.
And if that doesn't work, maybe the drug industry will just take a page from their playbook for the epileptic drugs that are about to lose patent and go generic, and try and get state legislatures to pass laws making it illegal for pharmacists to switch patients over to cheaper, perfectly effective generic alternatives. Illegal. But that's no surprise: Pharma spent $44 million on statehouse lobbying in 2005 and 2006 -- and they weren't just buying good times. Hell, in this case, they donated tons of money to the Epilepsy Foundation and did the lobbying under their auspices.
But look, Andrew Sullivan tells me the pharmaceutical industry is great, and way better than in Europe, so I'm sure this is all some sort of big misunderstanding. If they don't keep patients from switching to generics, after all, how will they fund R&D!?
