They patented inhalers for a second time. It's the exact same drug. The only thing that changed was the propellant. It went from R-12 to R-134a. Everyone who had to switch out R-12 from refrigeration to drug manufacturing switched to R-134a. There was absolutely _nothing_ novel about it.
It was _criminal_ to allow them the second patent for just the propellant change. It took generic $5 inhalers off the market and replaced them with $95 inhalers. It was was one of the most corrupt swindles I've ever personally seen.
> Known as "reverse settlement payments," or "pay-to-delay" deals, the financial arrangements are a unique but common practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Essentially, they allow drug manufacturers in some instances to pay competitors not to manufacture generic versions of their products, thereby ensuring that they maintain patent protection for as long as possible.
Drug salespeople, doctors, pharmacists, and insurance companies.
If you get a prescription for a ProAir HFA inhaler, which is parented because it uses R134a, even if you did want to do your own research and evaluate whether the generic with the different propellant would work you can't just go buy the generic, you have to do extra work to get a prescription that applies.
Doctors don't write prescriptions for albuterol sulfate, they write ProAir HFA and it's up to the consumer to push back. They don't even advise taking OTC ibuprofen or pseudoephedrine, they say Advil and Sudafed. It's a pet peeve of mine, but it seems I'm the weird one in that respect...
A group of pharmaceutical companies that held patents for non-CFC inhalers got together and created the "International Pharmaceutical Aerosol Consortium" to lobby in order to get the generic version banned.
This isn't (AIUI) relevant to that exact problem. As Wikipedia explains:
"[T]he Orange Book lists patents that are purported to protect each drug. Patent listings and use codes are provided by the drug application owner, and the FDA is obliged to list them. In order for a generic drug manufacturer to win approval of a drug under the Hatch-Waxman Act, the generic manufacturer must certify that they will not launch their generic until after the expiration of the Orange Book-listed patent, or that the patent is invalid, unenforceable, or that the generic product will not infringe the listed patent. "
It sounds like it's easy for manufacturers to.keep adding patents, and the onus is on the generics to make the case that they're not violating. Perhaps most are just scared away, until every listed patent expires (and no new ones are added in the interim)
I would like to point out the administration's accomplishments in the last two weeks (shamelessly copied from Matt Stoller's recent piece "This Is What Governing Looks Like")
* Banned non-compete agreements for 40 million workers
* Raised overtime wages for 4 million salaried workers
* Forced airlines to automatically offer refunds for canceled flights and poorly handled baggage
* Banned illegal junk fees in mortgage lending
* Forced divestment of TikTok from Chinese ownership
* Blocked corporate merger in insulation
* Filed to block a corporate merger in fashion
* Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers
* Announced an end to the duty free period on Chinese solar panels to encourage U.S. manufacturing.
* Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia
I think for stuff controlled by the president, “both sides are the same” is indeed clearly false. But there’s a decent argument to be made that it doesn’t really matter who you vote for for Congress, since the system is structured to require both parties to agree on almost any controversial legislation.
Do they? I'm not well immersed in the socials, but I thought "both side are the same" peaked around 2000, and now the pendulum has swung to "the other side is wrong in every way".
And of course, the conservative Supreme Court is likely to strip the FTC of its power and render many of its decisions invalid, giving conservatives the last laugh on this and many other issues.
Both sides are the same in the way that, they generally work in tandem to erode the common individual in favor of the wealthy. That doesn't mean the totality of what they do is to that end, it doesn't mean that they aren't at odds with eachother as to how to reach that collective goal at times, just that, pragmatically, it doesn't matter anywhere but on very short, ultimately inconsequential time scales.
These things get planned and implemented far outside of the normal 2/4/6 year election cycle, so it's easy to hide what's actually happening.
Fact is, red tie, blue tie, they're all drinking and merrymaking together, they attend the same parties, they bang the same hookers, and they're in the same corporation's pockets. You have some outliers here and there, but, aside from the occasional filibuster, they do little more than create a spectacle.
None of this is unusual, it's simply how systems of government have been exploited and subverted since humans had the idea the government should exist. That being a somewhat esoteric idea only serves to further the degeneration of a system, much in the same way doing nothing, which is likely what some find so offensive about the idea that "both sides are the same", furthers the degeneration of a system.
Which is a little silly given her credentials. Her antitrust research has been groundbreaking. She's almost single-handedly revitalized that area of law.
The threat of litigation is often enough to change behaviors radically.
For example, many companies that had taken advantage of putting devices into the Hatch-Waxman Orange Book being an unchecked unmonitored way to lay claim took their devices off once they saw the FTC starting to get interested.
Adopting a narrow view of success is detrimental. Yes, it's hard as heck to figure out how to appreciate & be happy for "number of mergers never proposed because the FTChas actually started taking anti-trust seriously again". We will never have hard data. But for sure for sure for sure, companies are being more cautious, are thinking twice before trying to acquire their competitors or buying a company to land horizontal market control.
Even losing is a detriment. The FTC had done nothing under Borkism. It was free reign. Even winning to the FTC isn't fun. It's expensive as heck, and there's a ton of discovery that happens & sheds light in a lot of dark dark places in your corporation. And other people see, hey, the FTC is out there, they're doing things, and maybe we won't get as lucky.
Last, people act like, oh, the FTC lost, they must be incompetent & unable to build cases, but there's a ton of random chance & whim that goes into each case; replay a case in another courtroom or with different judges or juries and who knows what would have happenen.
Note that this comes following “the Commission’s November challenges led to Kaleo Inc., Impax Labs, GlaxoSmithKline, and Glaxo Group delisting patents in response to the FTC’s warning letters” and subsequently “AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, and GlaxoSmithKline all announc[ing] commitments to cap inhaler out-of-pocket costs at $35.” This process is precedented with delivering wins.
Presumably they have their grounds for the challenges, and the article says that each drug is covered by numerous patents, but I would be very surprised if Ozempic in particular lost ALL patent protection. Semaglutide itself seems to be a fairly revolutionary product, and reasonably different from Liraglutide (which I think predated it).
Readit News
They patented inhalers for a second time. It's the exact same drug. The only thing that changed was the propellant. It went from R-12 to R-134a. Everyone who had to switch out R-12 from refrigeration to drug manufacturing switched to R-134a. There was absolutely _nothing_ novel about it.
It was _criminal_ to allow them the second patent for just the propellant change. It took generic $5 inhalers off the market and replaced them with $95 inhalers. It was was one of the most corrupt swindles I've ever personally seen.
OOTL, what is stopping companies from making generics of the older version & patients just not using the new version?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna447916
> Known as "reverse settlement payments," or "pay-to-delay" deals, the financial arrangements are a unique but common practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Essentially, they allow drug manufacturers in some instances to pay competitors not to manufacture generic versions of their products, thereby ensuring that they maintain patent protection for as long as possible.
If you get a prescription for a ProAir HFA inhaler, which is parented because it uses R134a, even if you did want to do your own research and evaluate whether the generic with the different propellant would work you can't just go buy the generic, you have to do extra work to get a prescription that applies.
Doctors don't write prescriptions for albuterol sulfate, they write ProAir HFA and it's up to the consumer to push back. They don't even advise taking OTC ibuprofen or pseudoephedrine, they say Advil and Sudafed. It's a pet peeve of mine, but it seems I'm the weird one in that respect...
"[T]he Orange Book lists patents that are purported to protect each drug. Patent listings and use codes are provided by the drug application owner, and the FDA is obliged to list them. In order for a generic drug manufacturer to win approval of a drug under the Hatch-Waxman Act, the generic manufacturer must certify that they will not launch their generic until after the expiration of the Orange Book-listed patent, or that the patent is invalid, unenforceable, or that the generic product will not infringe the listed patent. "
It sounds like it's easy for manufacturers to.keep adding patents, and the onus is on the generics to make the case that they're not violating. Perhaps most are just scared away, until every listed patent expires (and no new ones are added in the interim)
I still have a dozen vintage cans of R-12 but no vehicle that uses them.
I did joke I’m really surprised the vested interests selected someone competent who wants to hold these companies accountable to the public.
* Banned non-compete agreements for 40 million workers
* Raised overtime wages for 4 million salaried workers
* Forced airlines to automatically offer refunds for canceled flights and poorly handled baggage
* Banned illegal junk fees in mortgage lending
* Forced divestment of TikTok from Chinese ownership
* Blocked corporate merger in insulation
* Filed to block a corporate merger in fashion
* Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers
* Announced an end to the duty free period on Chinese solar panels to encourage U.S. manufacturing.
* Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia
These things get planned and implemented far outside of the normal 2/4/6 year election cycle, so it's easy to hide what's actually happening.
Fact is, red tie, blue tie, they're all drinking and merrymaking together, they attend the same parties, they bang the same hookers, and they're in the same corporation's pockets. You have some outliers here and there, but, aside from the occasional filibuster, they do little more than create a spectacle.
None of this is unusual, it's simply how systems of government have been exploited and subverted since humans had the idea the government should exist. That being a somewhat esoteric idea only serves to further the degeneration of a system, much in the same way doing nothing, which is likely what some find so offensive about the idea that "both sides are the same", furthers the degeneration of a system.
For example, many companies that had taken advantage of putting devices into the Hatch-Waxman Orange Book being an unchecked unmonitored way to lay claim took their devices off once they saw the FTC starting to get interested.
Adopting a narrow view of success is detrimental. Yes, it's hard as heck to figure out how to appreciate & be happy for "number of mergers never proposed because the FTChas actually started taking anti-trust seriously again". We will never have hard data. But for sure for sure for sure, companies are being more cautious, are thinking twice before trying to acquire their competitors or buying a company to land horizontal market control.
Even losing is a detriment. The FTC had done nothing under Borkism. It was free reign. Even winning to the FTC isn't fun. It's expensive as heck, and there's a ton of discovery that happens & sheds light in a lot of dark dark places in your corporation. And other people see, hey, the FTC is out there, they're doing things, and maybe we won't get as lucky.
Last, people act like, oh, the FTC lost, they must be incompetent & unable to build cases, but there's a ton of random chance & whim that goes into each case; replay a case in another courtroom or with different judges or juries and who knows what would have happenen.
Note that this comes following “the Commission’s November challenges led to Kaleo Inc., Impax Labs, GlaxoSmithKline, and Glaxo Group delisting patents in response to the FTC’s warning letters” and subsequently “AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, and GlaxoSmithKline all announc[ing] commitments to cap inhaler out-of-pocket costs at $35.” This process is precedented with delivering wins.