Hamel, M. (2016). Pharmaceutical Social Enterprise 2.0 Brings a Small Miracle to Big Pharma. Solutions 7(2): 32–35. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/pharmaceutical-social-enterprise-2-0-brings-a-small-miracle-to-big-pharma/
Perspectives Pharmaceutical Social Enterprise 2.0 Brings a Small Miracle to Big Pharma by Mike Hamel
epilepsyu.com
Global rates of epilepsy.
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he major companies researching and developing innovative drugs to improve and extend human life are known as Big Pharma. Big Pharma is dominated by a handful of international corporations who sink billions into research, spend billions on marketing, and scoop up billions in sales. Their focus is on the United States—which accounts for more than a third of the global pharmaceutical market—and a handful of other nations that can afford the exorbitant price tag for patented medicines. But even in the wealthiest countries the cost of lifesaving pills can be hard to swallow. Big Pharma is often in the news for unwarranted price hikes ranging from 50 percent to more than 5,000 percent, as in in the case of Daraprim, a drug used by cancer and AIDS patients that went from USD$13.50 per pill to $900 in some places.
Uncommon increases are all too common. According to FiercePharma. com, the company Valeant, “jacked up prices on 54 meds this year alone by an industry-leading average of 65.6%, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis. Last year, it hiked the prices on 62 drugs—by 50%, on average. Some of those increases were big ones. This year’s largest jumper was Glumetza, which is now 550% more expensive than it was on Jan. 1. As of July 31, the drug’s list price stood at USD$10,020 for 90 tablets, up from $896 in January 2013.”1 The same story is being repeated throughout the health-care industry. Pharmaceutical companies acquire medications and hike their prices to reflect what they claim to be the fair market value of the drugs, a practice that’s drawing heat in the national press and on Capitol Hill.2
32 | Solutions | March-April 2016 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
This is old news to Big Pharma veteran Scott Boyer. He joined Big Pharma after college and spent the next 27 years with two of the Top 10 companies, carving out a successful career. After that he spent a few years as a pharmaceutical consultant. He knows the industry from top to bottom. He understands that it takes substantial profits to underwrite research and that shareholders expect a solid return on their investments. “That never used to bother me,” Scott recalls, “but one day I was analyzing market research data about a new drug. The wealthy and emerging markets were lined up together in a bar graph and there was this small, lonely bar on the far end of the chart that called out to me. ‘ROW’ was the title, and it stood for Rest of World.” “I began to hear a ‘whisper’ to do something about ROW, to find a way