Today the Supreme Court denied the 70 percent of Americans who take generic prescription drugs the right to sue those drug companies for failing to adequately warn of possible side effects.
The Supreme Court denying consumers a day in court? Never, never in a million years. Sadly, it seems to be happening on just about a daily basis. In yet another anti-consumer 5-to-4 decision, the conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, sided with generic drug companies, shielding them from liability for failing to update their labels even in response to overwhelming evidence of side effects....
I suppose one could say that Big Pharma has more money and therefore more responsiblity in supplying necessary information to the consumer of medication. By the way, this ruling directly effects every American that ever goes to the doctor and is given a perscription to fill, such as a child's ear ache in need of penicillan. The information a consumer receives from the pharmacy in relation to generic drugs is now going to far less than brand name.
Big Pharma is not selling 70% of the medications on the market, generic manufacturers are selling 70% of the medications, so this effects the entire population of the USA. To believe Big Pharma can afford these warning laws when generic companies can't is nonsense.
Generic companies already get huge breaks in receiving production allowances of 20% in dosage strength of medication they manufacture and sell. That is why some people do not do well with generic medication. On occassion, especially with chronic illness such as heart disease related to muscle tone, generics sometimes deliver too little or too much medication to the patient. It is why physicians occassionally will state patients can only take brand name formulations. Their patients cannot toleratte the upto 20% change in dosage allowed with generics.
So, if generic pharmaceutical companies already are 'weighted' in favor of lower prices their profit margin is automatically higher and the fact they have the majority market, so that can't be it. So, why does this Supreme Court favor generic manufacturers over brand name manufacturers. After all, Brand Name Manufacturers have 'potential' for far higher income with discovery of new medications. Wall Street. Why would the four extremists and a conservative judge benefit generic manufacturers and victimize consumers after all the new medications will be far better than generics ever could be, right?
...Here we see that Glaxo winds up with a nearly 20% increase (click here) in sales over the next decade, while Bristol manages 10%, with a big drop as a result of the loss of Plavix patent around 2013 and 2014. What’s making Glaxo perform so well? I looked at Anderson’s product-by-product financial model for the British drug giant, and didn’t see any single drug driving the growth. The most important are Benlysta, the lupus drug made with Human Genome Sciences, and a replacement asthma drug, being developed with Theravance. The Theravance drug only really replaces sales lost as Advair, Glaxo’s big brand asthma inhaler, faces competition.... The next ten years of Wall Street investment will see many current drug patents expire. Remember, as I mentioned before, not long ago there was a lot of talk about expanding patent rights and the drug manufacturers were moaning about how they never get a sincere return on their research dollars? Well, this is a good part of the reason. They are finding their patents ending and with it they become generic.
The next large return on pharmaceuticals comes from generic manufacturers. So, the Activist Right Wing Extremists of the Supreme Court along with the Conservative have decided to deregulate the pharamaceutical industry from the bench. They have removed the safeguards to the citizen so Wall Street can reap the profits of generic manufacturing over the next decade.
The economics of producing generic medications have nothing to do with it. It is all about money. It is all about the Plutocracy. It isn't about the Constitution any more, it is about greed.
