For years as a psychiatrist I have observed the pharmaceutical companies charge huge amounts for every new psychiatric medication. This started in my view with the emergence of Prozac ( generic: fluoxetine) in the late 1980’s. Suddenly this drug cost several times what previous antidepressants had cost before Prozac. I felt later that part of what happened was the Big Pharma watched intently as the Reagan administration deregulated industries and let the “market forces” take over. They saw no enforcement or regulation of higher prices. They priced Prozac accordingly higher, much higher. But since Prozac was supposedly the best thing since toasters, and a ‘new’ class of antidepressant, many people were willing to pay the higher costs and the insurance companies largely followed suit and covered it. All other classes of medications, antibiotics, blood pressure medications, etc., also took the initiative and priced their emerging drugs to market from then on and we had a spike in health costs as medications nationally became a higher cost for everyone including corporate entities since companies are now to be considered “citizens” due to the Supreme Court’s Citizen v. United States decision.
Perhaps a review of the drug pricing cycle is in order for the non medical professional reader. Drug companies have by law for decades, a 20 year exclusive right to a medication from discovery and patent filing, through research and development, drug trials and approval. This usually takes on average approximately 10 years. Then when a drug comes on the market, it is a “brand name” drug and its pharamceutical company can price it at whatever level they wish until that 20 year total is met. Then the medication goes “generic” and can be manufactured and sold by any other company after FDA approval in the generic pipeline which is much much shorter.
Pen and Psychiatrist 