While I'm sure there is a crazy markup, it's important to note the cost to produce - as in manufacture - does not include the cost of drug discovery, which is extremely expensive and involves a good amount of risk over a long period of time.

You can't just compare the cost of discovering a new drug vs. cost of producing a generic without any research like that.

Intellectual property is a scam. A commonly heard defense of intellectual property is that it is needed for companies to fund their R&D. However pharmaceutical companies typically spent a lot more money on marketing & sales than they do on R&D. Big Pharma spending money on marketing and sales is harmful to our health. Apparently it's a lot more lucrative to get people drugged up on painkillers or whatever than to discover new medicine. If we didn't have intellectual property then we would have competition resulting in the lowest possible medicine prices. Companies would have no money for marketing so medicine would be judged on their actual properties, only the best would be given to patients, not the best marketed, but best health-wise. Companies would have no money for R&D either, but the government could fund R&D We shouldn't blame the players, we created a system that produces these bad actors. Let's change the system so that these bad actors couldn't exist. Intellectual property is a international problem, join the pirate party of your country and let's make it happen!

The eu:

€20 take it or leave it

From the bottom of my heart, fuck you Pfizer. I have had Covid twice, had my blood oxygen drop as low as 79, and I would still rather die a miserable covid death than suffer the injustice of being greed raped by the absolute worst caricature of capitalist pigs that actually came to life. I hope that money makes your board members miserable and can't do much to treat the uncurable, flesh eating disease your evil pig carcasses should be justifiably riddled with by karma, leaving your kids to donate your disgustingly afforded estate to charity to cleanse themselves of the nasty aftertaste of human suffering, the faint stink of people who are trying to take paxlovid and recover from a major virus in the rain and vulnerable cold because they can't afford both rent and medicine, after your death. Burn in hell, you uncaring scum.

EDIT: I realize this is a lot of vitrol to throw out into the universe, but they likely won’t ever see this on Lemmy, and to make matters worse they clearly won’t care anyway. It's just my own version of catharsis, I guess

Didn’t the government fund the development? So.. it’s not like they need so much to recover R&D right?

Paxlovid kept me alive when I had COVID. This makes me really upset. People will actually die without this.

So many Martin Shkrelis out there pricing drugs to the highest level they can get away with. Every big pharmaceutical company does this kind of thing, especially with new drugs.

Thanks capitalism!!

/sarcasm.

The amount of Pfizer boot lickers here is astounding

It's been too long since the aristocrats were reminded that they need us more than we need them and that they can't hire enough of us to stop the rest of us once we take an idea to mind.

Seriously, people are acting like this is new. There is no sense in shaming them we've had it brought to the mainstream by people like Martin Skhreli and nothing has been done. Martin Skhreli himself is only in jail because of his ponzi schemes, a.k.a. screwing other rich people out of their money. The only reason Pfizer was praised was because it was needed in a time of need and because they hired plenty of lobbyists.

I was given (free) Paxlovid when I finally contracted covid this year. We need laws regulating price increases. If you can't demonstrate that your costs for a product or service went up, you can't increase by more than x%. I don't know how you do this without encouraging higher introductory prices because it's not a problem that I've thought about in depth, but something like this needs to happen with further consideration.

Another thing I'd like to see is robber barons getting prosecuted for crimes against humanity, but that's not realistic.

13$ to produce including all the R&D behind it?

I'm not a fan of big pharma, quite the contrary, but I'd be curious to know where this number comes from...

Ok who let Martin shkreli out of jail?

Explain why we make it legal for companies to set their own prices again

That's called freedom! Go to Russia if you don't like it! /s

Isn't it just this expensive because the government can't negotiate prices? So the insurances will pay a normal price but when the government is paying it'll cost more