On The Couch… Some Weekend Reading
9 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // November 8th, 2009 // 10:49 am
Such a busy pharma world and so little time to keep up, yes? Like you, we always poke around for items of interest, and so we thought we would point out a few you may enjoy from the past week. Think of it as a little bit of catching up. Meanwhile, we hope your weekend is enjoyable - a nice day for a ride in the country, perhaps - and look forward to seeing you again tomorrow…
Hard to believe, but a union is demanding more Viagra pills as part of its health coverage. For real. Striking transit workers in Philadelphia are miffed that the city offered to pay for only for 10 erectile dysfunction pills a month, according to The Philadelphia Daily News, which aptly labels the bargaining a bone of contention. We’ll have to see how much staying power the bosses at Transport Workers Union Local 234 really have, but they should be happy city officials didn’t offer to pay for Stiff Nights.
Just in case you were wondering where PhRMA stands on the health care reform bill passed by the US House of Representatives, the trade group this weekend issued a none-too-subtle statement saying the legislation would “kill tens of thousands of jobs.” You can catch up on the vote here.
The $2.3 billion settlement paid by Pfizer may not end being the biggest on record. More than 1,000 active whistle-blower cases are backlogged at the Department of Justice, and about 200 of them deal with drugmakers, according to The Asbury Park Press. “The seeds for these cases were planted a number of years ago, and they’re finally coming to fruition,” said Reuben Guttman, a lawyer in Washington who specializes in whistle-blower cases. “There’s lots more coming.”
More drugmakers are quietly making India a major manufacturing and R&D hub. The latest include Teva, Watson, Lonza, Eisai and Astellas, which are setting up new facilities or buying small companies or plants. “We aim to become market leaders in India within the next five years in various specialities in which we will launch our products. Our focus is to establish our own sales and marketing strength for the time being and we are not looking at local production for the next few years,” Himanshu Dave, Astellas Pharma’s director of sales and marketing, The Business Standard.
Couch thx to Keko on Flickr Creative Commons
riv
I’m sure this issue will elicit hearty har hars and much comaraderie from your readers and the voting public.
The left and their unions and politicians never cease to disgust me. More Viagra for our brothers! It’s a civil right!
No abortions for women though.
Justice in Michigan
Re: PhRMA’s “support” for health-care reform, their rejection of the House bill is not surprising, of course.
Beyond that, I assume their position is somewhere between Olympia Snowe and Dick Armey.
Lots of “ball field” there…
Atlex
Justice,
Actually, PhRMA is relatively well-aligned with the Senate Finance bill, which should come as no surprise since its “negotiated” deal was with the White House and Finance Chairman Baucus.
Atlex
Former Pharma Marketing Director
The statement issued by PhRMA says nothing about how and why those tens of thousands of jobs will be lost. My, we are all getting good at fear mongering…..
One would think that in fact tens of thousands of jobs should be created in an effort to see how to keep up with innovations and still cure cancer while keeping an eye on cost efficiencies…
If a company can knowingly decide to break the law, even when they know that the possible fine is will be in the billions of dollars for doing so, and they still break the law, then we all have to ask where the priorities lie. How could anyone break the law, presume not to pay the fine, then buy up other pharmaceutical companies, lay off thousands of people, put entire county’s of people out of work, yet award inordinate bonuses to the upper echelon’s? Something is fundamentally wrong, and we all have something to say about this. This is our health care dollars. We go to our insurance plans and take out money form the plans we paid into to cover the cost of these drugs, we earmark our money, we do without something somewhere else to be able to provide for health care when we get sick. Yes, we have a right as consumers to decide where it goes, and how it goes.
We all need to challenge PhRMA to enumerate exactly how these jobs will be lost and challenge them to sufficiently substantiate their claims of the necessity of this.
Real management starts when the going gets tough, and if the heads of these companies cannot come up with a way of making in work in light of certain challenges, then are they really qualified to draw the salary, compensations and bonuses with any extras?
Hap
Would the tens of thousands of jobs killed be distinguishable from the ones that are currently being killed by their mismanagement (and inability to develop profits other than but dumping staff outsourcing, and paying themselves lots of stocholder cash)?
When people actually trust oil companies, health insurance companies, and drug companies to look out for their best interests, I think we’ve officially jumped the shark as a country.
Atlex
FPMD,
The short answer is pretty straightforward:
In the short term, lower revenues due to significant increase in rebates in Medicare and Medicaid (in the house bill) will yield job cuts directly as pharma companies adjust cost structures to lower revenue. In the long term (and more importantly), lower expected ROIs on new products and declining IRRs will yield less investment. Ultimately, the industry will further contract (ie, lose more jobs).
Atlex
Former Pharma Marketing Director
Altex,
In case you haven’t figured it out, when I asked the question I was being sarcastic…
An industry that calculates the inevitable fines it will get for breaking the law and factors it in the cost of goods and breaks the law anyway has a different set of priorities, which probably do not include a pharmacoeconomic approach to really treating illness and cranking up cures for cancers. So, do we really need this “friend”, probably not. I can hardly wait for the restructuring…
We make the rules Altex, we as in “we the people”, if we want to do these things we can.
Former Pharma Marketing Director
To put it another way, we can all just say “No, we can’t do it and then give thousands of reasons as to why “it” can’t be done. In the end, we will find out that we really have no option, we must do “it” whatever “it” is in this case.
When there are generalized statements about how many jobs this is going to cost and examples put forward about why this isn’t going to work, without alternative arguments as to why we simply must make it work, we should all become suspicious.
Innovations and cures are not built on such thoughts as “no can do”. The statement being made by PhRMA is a glaring red flag to all of us, that PhRMA is not aligned….
pharma pr hack
How are all these jobs going to be lost any different than the ones they keep moving overseas? If we are going to cost thousands of new jobs in their expansion of the East, is that so bad?
Especially as they are already cutting thousands of jobs in New Jersey do we really care that they aren’t able to create thousand more jobs in China that just run up the taxpayer bill for the FDA audits and inspections there?