Pubdate: Sun, 03 May 2015
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2015 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Eric M. Van
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v15/n229/a04.html

LIFE-SAVING DRUG SHOULD NOT BE TANGLED IN THE TUG OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Jeff Jacoby seems to suggest that pharmaceutical companies should be 
applauded for more than doubling the price of the life-saving 
anti-overdose drug naloxone in response to increased demand, thus 
ensuring that "inventories of the drugs aren't immediately depleted" 
(Opinion, April 26). As a result, he claims, "more lives are being saved."

That's nonsense. A given supply of a drug ultimately saves the same 
number of lives whether it is disseminated all at once or rationed. 
Meanwhile, allowing the drug companies to raise prices as long as 
demand outstrips supply gives them a powerful incentive against 
rapidly increasing manufacture; they can maximize their profits by 
doing so slowly, thus keeping supplies low and prices high.

If Attorney General Maura Healey succeeds in forcing lower prices, 
that can only increase the supply, and that would save lives.

Further, it would seem to me that no medical institution could 
justify not buying such an important drug, regardless of price, but 
if they were forced to, it would likely be institutions in poorer 
communities that curtailed their orders. If the free market is doing 
anything here, then, it's not saving more lives; it's saving more 
lives of the affluent at the expense of the poor.

Eric M. Van

Watertown
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom