Patents

I am no legal expert, but today I thought I would examine another one of the reasons why medical care is so expensive in the U.S.--the practice of "evergreening" patents in prescription drug. This is a tactic pharmaceutical companies use to extend the life of patents of money-making prescription drugs.

A patent on a prescription drug typically lasts 20 years. However, this can be extended for various reasons. Congress allowed for a 6-month extension of patents if the drug was one that needed to be tested in children. While child testing is important since children sometimes react differently to medicines than adults, this is a very costly provision. According to an article by Robert Weissman (called The evergreen patent system: pharmaceutical company tactics to extend patent protections (Patently Abusive)) It cost pharmaceuticals a bit less than $800 million to do these tests in children on selected drugs, but it resulted in an extra $30 billion dollars in sales. (That's right $800 million in costs, $30 billion (with a B) in extra revenue). I think there is something fishy about this situation. A patent lasts for 20 years-- why can't they do research on the affect of the drug on children in those 20 years? Why do they need an extra 6 months? Six months doesn't seem like much time to do substantial research--especially with medical testing where a lot of the testing revolves around affects from drugs on the body over time. It seems to me that enough research could be completed in 20 years, and that extending the amount of time to do research by 2.5% doesn't add much except excessive profits at the expense of those who are ill.

Again from Weissman:

Led by Public Citizen, consumer groups say the pediatric exclusivity has conferred a windfall on the drug companies. Public Citizen estimates AstraZeneca will earn more than $1.4 billion in added revenue for Prilosec, thanks to the pediatric exclusivity provision, with Pfizer also crossing the $1 billion threshold for Lipitor. Drugs such as Prozac, Celebrex, Zoloft, Claritin and Cipro will bring their makers more than $300 million in added revenue, due to the provision.

Another way pharmaceuticals can extend the life of a patent is by tweaking the ingredients in medications, or by claiming that the drug can actually cure or treat other conditions than originally advertised. For example, a depression medicine may be able to be re-billed as treating anxiety which will extend the life of the patent. Sometimes when a patent does expire, pharmaceuticals can again, tweak the ingredients, and then market the drug as a "new and improved" version of the drug. Since consumers don't know whether the new ingredients are really necessary or not, they may choose to take the new medicine (with the new patent), rather than staying on the old drug which has lost its patent protection.

I don't want to totally demonize pharmaceutical companies since they do a lot of good. I also firmly believe that we do need monetary rewards to help pharmaceuticals recoup the costs of research and development. We can't expect people to be extremely inventive if we're not willing to compensate them handsomely. However, the line needs to be drawn somewhere. The cost of prescription drugs is rising much faster than the value of our incomes and health benefits. At some point the cost will be more than we car bear, and we will have to either reform the way prescription drugs are priced, or we will have to do without prescription drugs; and for many people, the latter is not an option.