Deal Comes At A Time When America Is Outraged By Predatory Practices Of Its Pharma Cos
India has agreed to supply to the US generic cancer drugs at a time there is outrage in America about the predatory practices by the US pharma industry , one of whose leaders is getting hammered for increasing the price of life-saving drugs by as much as 5000% overnight.
Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, is being dubbed the “poster child for price gouging in the pharma industry“ and BBC has asked if he is the “the most hated man in America“ after he bumped up the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat a parasitic disease, from an already high $ 13.50 a pill to $750. Daily Beast called him an “*******“.
Although Turing has walked back from the price rise in the face of public anger, his actions have drawn attention to the strategy adopted by Big Pharma to buy out older drugs that are nearing patent loss and hike their price massively, with the argument that the money is needed to fund new research.
On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton stepped up to the plate, offering proposals to control drug prices, even as her challenger Bernie Sanders and others have called for eliminating corporate restrictions on generics. Such a move will help both American patients and Indian drug manufacturers, who have constrained by Big Pharma with the familiar argument that it needs to recoup money spent on research, and generic ma kers profit from the work of Big Pharma.
The full details of the USIndia agreement was not disclosed, but Indian officials confirmed that New Delhi had agreed to supply an “offpatent“ cancer drug.
Such a move could be a template for the supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals to a US system that is overpriced and overburdened, causing untold suffering to millions of poor and middleclass Americans.
The pharma lobby is the biggest contributor of money to the US political systems and it is widely believed that many lawmakers are beholden to it in lieu of campaign contributions. India is the second largest exporter of drugs to the United States. In 2014, India held 13% share of the total 64,170 imported lines of pharmaceuticals, according to a US fact sheet. The US spends close to $ 3 trillion -some 17% of its GDP -on healthcare, an expense that far exceeds even military spending.
The two countries also agreed to a raft of measures, including creating and growing a cadre of field epidemiologists in India to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats. The US also pledged to engage with India on traditional medicine, health information systems, and agreed to launch a new collaboration on mental health.
