• India’s Efforts to Aid Poor Worry Drug Makers
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/health/indias-efforts-to-aid-poor-worry-drugmakers.html?ref=world&_r=0&pagewanted=

    American trade officials have voiced concerns about India’s treatment of drug patents, including its reasons for sometimes overriding them. President Obama discussed the issue this year with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India in the Oval Office, administration officials said.

    Executives in the international pharmaceutical industry, increasingly dependent on drug sales in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil, contend that India’s efforts to cancel patents threaten the global system for discovering cures (...) [*]

    (...)

    For drug companies, the most worrisome aspect of India’s efforts to lower drug prices is that other countries are beginning to follow its lead. Both Indonesia and the Philippines recently adopted patent laws modeled on India’s, and legislators in Brazil and Colombia have proposed following suit.

    (...)

    Even insured patients in the United States may wonder why they are making thousands of dollars in co-payments if these medicines cost far less in India. Treatment with Herceptin is even more expensive in the United States, so even Medicare patients must make thousands of dollars in co-pays.

    (...)

    For the Obama administration, the fight over drug patents in the developing world is a minefield. The drug industry was a major contributor to Mr. Obama’s campaign and an early and crucial backer of his health care program. But Mr. Obama’s advisers hope to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which was harshly criticized by AIDS activists for its initial stand against providing generic antiretroviral drugs to Africa.

    [*] Sur cette affirmation, un article qui affirme le contraire (via Dean Baker)
    http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf

    The initial eruption of small and large innovations leading to the creation of a new industry – from chemicals to cars, from radio and TV to personal computers and investment banking – is seldom, if ever, born out of patent protection and is, instead, the fruits of highly competitive-cooperative environments. It is only after the initial stages of explosive innovation and rampant growth end that mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents, usually because their internal grow potential diminishes and the industry structure become concentrated.

    A closer look at the historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side-effects, strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side-effects. Both theoretically and empirically, the political economy of government operated patent systems indicates that weak legislation will generally evolve into a strong protection and that the political demand for stronger patent protection comes from old and stagnant industries and firms, not from new and innovative ones. Hence the best solution is to abolish patents entirely through strong constitutional measures and to find other legislative instruments, less open to lobbying and rent-seeking, to foster innovation whenever there is clear evidence that laissez-faire under-supplies it.

    #santé #pharma #bigpharma #patentes #pauvres #lobby #medicare #états-unis #Inde

  • Baffling Budget Numbers : Making Reporters Do Their Job- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/baffling-budget-numbers-m_b_3493269.html

    La manière des médias de présenter les faits façonne les croyances du public.

    Polls consistently show that the vast majority of the public has almost no idea of where their tax dollars go.

    ...

    The New York Times gave us two case studies in bad budget reporting last week. In one case the paper reported on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) estimate of the impact of immigration reform on the budget over the next decade. In the other case it reported on the debate over the extension of the food stamp program.

    In both articles the NYT followed the budget reporting ritual to the letter. As a result it conveyed almost no information to its readers.

    In the immigration article we were told CBO projects that immigration reform would reduce the deficit by $197 billion from 2014-2023. In the following decade CBO projected the deficit reduction would be even greater — an estimated $700 billion. Feel informed?

    The NYT has a very well-educated readership, but sorry, almost none of these people has any clue how large $197 billion is relative to the 10-year budget. (It’s about 0.4 percent.) Even fewer have been looking at budget projections for 2024-2033. (The projected deficit reduction would be around 0.9 percent of projected spending.)

    The NYT managed to botch the food stamp story even worse, describing food stamps as a “$760 billion program.” I thought they were referring to the 10-year cost, but in fact it was just a typo and they had mistakenly added a zero.

    We all make mistakes, but this one would have been less likely to slip past editors and find its way into print if the original story had described food stamps as being equal to 1.8 percent of the federal budget. That route also would have provided most readers with meaningful information.

    There is no reason the media cannot make it a policy to report budget numbers percentages or in other ways put them in a context that make them meaningful. There is zero argument on the other side. Budget reporters are intelligent people who can use a calculator. This exercise would add no more than a second or two to the time needed for filing a story.

    This is a case where progressives can hope to make a difference. There is currently a petition at Move-On asking the NYT to change its practice on budget reporting. There is no reason that they should not change, and if they do, much of the rest of the media is likely to follow.

    Petitioning the media to change its budget reporting might be outside the standard scope of action among progressives, but it is a well-defined action that could make a real difference. Much of our budget debate today is complete nonsense in large part because the public is so poorly informed.

    It should no longer be the case that people ask for cuts to anti-poverty programs even when they think the right amount of spending is two or three time as large as current outlays. We need a better informed debate. Pressuring the media can force them to take their responsibility to inform the public seriously.