Drugs
Zohydro: America's Deadliest New Drug?
Originally published March 26 2014
Big Pharma profiteering gone wild: $1,000-a-pill Hepatitis drug in USA sells for less than $10 in Egypt
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) The financial raping of America by Big Pharma has just achieved a new milestone with the impending launch of a Hepatitis C drug that costs $1,000 a pill. If you've ever wondered why U.S. health care is so unaffordable and inaccessible -- and why health insurance costs are bankrupting businesses and municipalities across the nation -- this is exactly why. The same drug that sells for $1,000 a pill in the USA -- named "Sovaldi" -- sells for just $10 in Egypt, or 1/100th the USA price.
Drug companies are, of course, granted FDA-enforced monopolies on the treatment of anything considered a "disease." As such, drugs are pushed into the marketplace at monopoly prices. Because if you're the CEO of Gilead Sciences, Inc., makers of the Sovaldi drug to be sold at $1,000 a pill, your job is to maximize revenues by any means necessary. When you're handed a monopoly by the FDA, the strategy for achieving that is simple: Raise the price to whatever you can get away with, then bill the insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid for $100, $500 or even $1,000 a pill.
100,000% mark-up?
Even if one pill of Sovaldi only costs 68 cents to manufacture, it will still be sold at $1,000 a pill because that's what the company demands. At this price, a course of treatment runs $84,000 in the USA. Gilead reduces the price to $57,000 in the UK -- apparently in a completely arbitrary manner based on whatever it can get for the drug rather than the drug's actual cost or value.
How much does this drug actually cost to produce? Consider this shocking fact, as reported by CNBC:
Gilead confirmed that it had agreed to supply the new drug in Egypt - which has the world's highest prevalence of the virus due to use of contaminated needles in the 1970s - at around $900 for a 12-week course of therapy, or about 1 percent of the U.S. price.
Yep, the same drug sold in the USA for $84,000 is sold in Egypt for $900 -- and the company still makes a profit!
What we are likely looking at with this drug is something approaching a 100,000% mark-up. In any other industry, that would be called "profiteering."
Modern medicine exists to enrich big business, not to make people healthy
The entire U.S. health care system is, of course, set up to fill the coffers of big business. That's why U.S. health care ("sick care") is the most expensive in the world, by far, even though it produces poor overall results. More people are sick, obese and diseased in America today than at any other time in human history, yet we are all paying more for health insurance coverage. Why is that?
The honest answer is that we are paying higher and higher prices for drugs that simply don't work. At the same time, the FDA and Big Pharma are systematically discrediting natural cures that are safe, effective and affordable. Hepatitis C, for example, can readily be treated with plant-based bioflavonoids called catechin and naringenin, both of which are entirely non-toxic and have been scientifically proven to kill the Hepatitis C virus.
You can buy a lot of green tea and citrus fruits for the $84,000 cost of a drug treatment. In fact, you could buy and juice organic produce for years with that much money, and the juicing protocol would help prevent cancer, heart disease and diabetes at the same time, dramatically lowering overall health care costs.
But that's never been the goal of health care. There is no incentive for anyone to lower costs. Every incentive, in fact, is based on raising costs so that revenues and profits can be raised, too.
Anyone who expects the health care industry to lower its own costs is expecting the impossible. No for-profit business sector ever seeks to shrink in size and revenues.
Profits for the few, sickness for the masses
Why does the pharmaceutical industry push $1,000-a-pill drug treatments rather than affordable, safe and effective natural protocols like juicing and superfoods? Because, of course, the drugs make the most money.
The entire "sick care" industry is driven by profits rather than any real desire to help humanity. As a result, whatever makes the most money gets pushed onto the most patients. The billing for all this gets shoved over to health insurance companies which must then raise insurance rates to insane levels to cover all the ridiculously-high-priced drugs.
And that's how we end up with families paying $5,000 - $10,000 a year for health insurance coverage. In a system driven by pure greed, nobody gets healthy and everybody gets financially raped one way or another.
Trust me when I say America's economy will continue to implode as long as we allow this parasitic, monopolistic health care system to rape us all of our incomes, investments and small business profits. The main reason why U.S. companies are closing their doors and firing workers is because they can't afford to pay the exorbitant health insurance premiums!
By Marc Lallanilla, Assistant Editor | February 28, 2014 02:17pm ET
One of the most controversial drugs to come to market in many years, the new painkiller known as Zohydro ER (hydrocodone bitartrate) has set off alarms in the medical, law enforcement and drug rehabilitation communities nationwide.
The medication itself isn't new — it's hydrocodone, the opioid-based drug currently available as Vicodin (which also contains the pain reliever acetaminophen [Tylenol]). But it comes in a stronger dose: Zohydro is pure hydrocodone available as an extended-release formula in a highly potent capsule.
Twenty-eight different states' attorneys general have urged the FDA to withdraw their approval of Zohydro, and the FDA's own advisory panel voted 11 to two against approving the drug. So why is the agency allowing the drug to go on sale in March? [Aspirin to Zoloft: The Scoop on 5 Medicines]
'It will kill people'
An activist group protesting "the opioid epidemic" has demanded the FDA answer that question. "In the midst of a severe drug addiction epidemic fueled by overprescribing of opioids, the very last thing the country needs is a new, dangerous, high-dose opioid," the members of Fed Up! wrote to the FDA in a letter dated Feb. 26.
"It will kill people as soon as it's released," Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a member of Fed Up!, told Forbes. "It's a whopping dose of hydrocodone packed in an easy-to-crush capsule."
Users could crush the Zohydro capsule, which can contain as much as 10 times the amount of hydrocodone as one Vicodin pill, into a powder and then snort or inject it, addiction experts worry.
"Someone unaccustomed to taking opioids could suffer a fatal overdose from just two capsules," wrote the Fed Up! authors. "A single capsule could be fatal if swallowed by a child."
Opioid-related deaths rise
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has noted an alarming increase in deaths related to opioid and other painkillers since the 1990s: According to the agency, 16,651 people in the United States died from using painkillers in 2010, compared to 4,030 deaths in 1999.
And these deaths are directly related to the sales of legal, prescription pain meds such as hydrocodone, oxycodone and methadone: "The unprecedented rise in overdose deaths in the U.S. parallels a 300-percent increase since 1999 in the sale of these strong painkillers," according to the CDC website.
Making Zohydro safer
Zoginex, the San Diego-based manufacturer of Zohydro, has stated its interest in preventing overdoses and misuse of the medication. The company claims that their drug is safer than painkillers that contain acetaminophen, which has been linked to liver problems.
"Zogenix is committed to promoting the appropriate use of Zohydro ER through a comprehensive suite of voluntary initiatives," including educational resources, surveillance programs and an abuse-deterrent formulation of the drug (which may include niacin or other compounds that make it undesirable to snort or inject the medication), according to a statement on the company's website.
But it remains to be seen if any of their steps will mollify critics of the medication.
"Zohydro ER has the potential to exacerbate the prescription pill epidemic," said Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, as quoted in the National Pain Report. "The FDA's decision to approve the drug doesn't make sense."