Pingree’s medicine will work

The letter to the editor by Michelle Vigue of Brewer (BDN, May 2) takes Chellie Pigree to task for “making the pharmaceutical companies out to be monsters for being financially successful.” She goes on to state that the pharmaceutical industry invests millions of dollars in research on new medications.

I would like to point out that most of the primary research for new medications is carried out by institutions such as universities with funding from the federal government that comes out of our tax dollars, not the pharmaceutical companies’ pockets. When a potentially useful drug is found, its manufacture is licensed by the discovering institution to a firm which may or may not recompense the finders, or the taxpayers whose moneys supported the initial research.

Vigue points out that all major pharmaceutical companies have programs to provide assistance to patients unable to afford the cost of their products. But recent articles in AARP sources indicate that there is wide variation in how the companys go about this. Some require the request to come via the prescribing physician, an imposition on the doctor’s staff. Other companies give only limited discounts to qualifying patients, and the requirements for qualification vary from company to company.

The companies do not grant assistance for all of their products, merely those they select for such a program. For refills, some companies require reapplication. Others charge for the card which allows the patient a discount at the drug store. And if the patient is prescribed drugs from several companies, application must be made by the patient or the physician to each company individually. In short, the pharmaceutical firms do seek to assist those without insurance and of limited means, but the process is burdensome and placed on the suffering individual who may not always be able to cope with the process.

I wonder how the pharmaceutical firms justify selling their products outside the United States for sometimes substantially less than U.S. prices? Do they sell them there at a discount? If so, why not in the United States? Do they expect a smaller profit abroad? Isn’t that nice of them, to assist such impoverished countries as Canada by charging less there than in the United States, whose taxpayers supported much of the original research? And how much do the companies spend on advertising and how many millions of dollars worth of free samples do their reps distribute to physicians, and then charge off as a necessary business expense, while passing on the extra cost to the patients who don’t get into their very convenient assistance programs?

Chellie Pingree is to be rather commended than condemned for trying to rein in the obscene price gouging of one of the more powerful lobbies. Keep up the fight, Chellie, even if you are blocked from testifying in Washington by those members of Congress beholden to the drug companies.

John F. Battick lives in Dover-Foxcroft.