Response to Adam’s Request

I don’t know why I bother going over to LostAdam. Everytime he publishes something I have to go through it and pull out the inaccurate statements. I comment on them and then I am dismissed as a partisan hack or troll.

After some banter about the cost of drugs in this country (the pharmaceuticals, not the recreational ones the hippies on the left use) I made the comment that if they wanted cheaper drugs we needed tort reform. I stated that 19 out of every 20 dollars spent on developing a drug was spent on something legal. I don’t know anymore if this number is completely accurate. I read it when I was in nursing school and some things have changed. However, it is not difficult to figure out that if people sue any company and get enough money out of them, then the company’s costs increase. This is just common sense and a little economics. I’ll make it simpler for Adam’s readers. If your company pays out more money you have to raise the cost of your products to compensate.

Adam was kind enough to respond with this:

I’d like you to back that up with some figures. I’ve been looking into this a little and more than a few people are saying the whole idea is Bus**t (expurgated by the Big Dog). More Republican lies.

The following links go to sites that talk about lawsuits in medicine. Some of them are very anti drug company. However, they show some of the enormous amounts of money these companies pay out.

  • FDA Review
  • CATO Institute
  • AHRP
  • Interestingly enough, many of these sites show that the cost of litigation is, in part responsible for the cost of drugs in the US. There is also evidence to show that the FDA is responsible because of the process used to approve drugs. As a side note, if drug companies can’t market a drug without FDA approval, shouldn’t people be suing the FDA for allowing harmful drugs out there?

    I know there will be people who say that the drug companies should pay through the teeth if someone has a problem. I don’t think this is right. If the drug company was negligent or dishonest then they are certainly culpable. On the other hand, if they acted in good faith there should not be these huge awards. But I will ask this, If it is OK for a drug company to pay out a fortune when their product causes a problem, why can’t they make a lot of money when their product is good? To take it a step further, why should a company that spends millions of dollars on research not be allowed to make a profit on their work? Especially when you consider they can only hold the patent on the drug for seven years. Then other companies can market generics and benefit from someone else’s research.

    I know that it is useless pointing this out to Adam and his readers. When they can not come up with a valid argument or they do not like what you say they start calling names. That does not bother me but it is an ineffective method of debating. Anyway, I responded to the post so they would know I was not fabricating the link between drug costs and lawsuits. I did not want them to use the h approach of saying that “I destroyed your argument and that is why you are silent.” This is done just after you are banned so you can not post.

    This is from the AHRP article:

    Plaintiffs’ lawyers can now finance enormously complicated suits that require years of pretrial work and substantial scientific expertise, in the hope of a multibillion-dollar payoff. Scores of firms collaborate on a case, with some responsible for finding claimants, others for managing the millions of documents that companies turn over, others for the written legal arguments, and still others for presenting the case to a jury. Some 60 firms have banded together, for example, in the Baycol litigation.

    And even when they do not form explicit partnerships, plaintiffs’ lawyers are working much more closely together than they once did. At conferences around the nation with names like “Mass Torts Made Perfect” — that one was organized by Mr. Papantonio and the lawyer-celebrity Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. — and “The Knowledge to Conquer,” lawyers trade information and legal strategies.

    “The plaintiffs have learned how to communicate and share information,” said Robert J. Gordon, of Weitz & Luxenberg in Manhattan, which is among the largest plaintiffs’ law firms in the country, with about 400 employees, including 70 lawyers.

    In addition, the plaintiffs’ bar has refined a technique in drug lawsuits that it has used effectively against many asbestos companies. Lawyers file a few cases with very sick plaintiffs in states and counties considered favorable to plaintiffs, while building big “inventories” of less seriously ill patients, or so-called pill-taker cases, even people who have used the drug but are not sick.

    If the lawyers can win large verdicts in the early cases, they then refuse to settle the claims of their other very sick clients unless the defendants also agree to pay the claims of people who are less sick. Under those circumstances, the companies face a difficult choice. If they go to trial in a case that includes a few seriously injured plaintiffs and hundreds more who are less affected, they risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a single case, frightening Wall Street and spurring more suits. But if they settle cases without a trial, they risk being perceived as an easy mark for lawyers.

    It appears to me that these lawyers are targeting rich drug companies in rather slick methods to extort BILLIONS of dollars from them.

    Once again, if the company has higher costs then those costs get passed on. I think drug companies should scale back research for a few years. The really sick people who would benefit from the new drugs will die off and there will be fewer lawsuits. Then, when people are begging for new drugs to help with their illnesses, they might just get rid of their lawyers. Perhaps people might even change the habits they have that contribute to the illnesses they sue over.

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    One Response to “Response to Adam’s Request”

    1. Adam says:

      I was asking you to back it up because I was looking into it and I was seeing a lot of arguments against it. I wasn’t saying directly that it was Republican lies or even directly calling you a liar. Sorry for the confusion, but at least it fueled a post at your website instead of a deep running conversation in comments over at mine.

      “I don’t know why I bother going over to LostAdam.”

      If coming to my website is a bother, then stop.

      “Everytime he publishes something I have to go through it and pull out the inaccurate statements.”

      This is the way you see your role over there at my blog I guess? I just give the facts to the best of my knowledge. If you say something counter that interests me, such as this subject, I’ll ask for some figures or more information.

      “I comment on them and then I am dismissed as a partisan hack or troll.”

      I dismiss you once in a while when I feel you are being too harsh on somebody. For example, if I mention, the UN, you mention rapists. If I mention Clinton, you mention rapists. If I mention Jessie Jackson, you mention rapists. I’m not calling you a troll though. Partisan hack? Yeah, sometimes. But aren’t we all guilty?

      Look. The bottom line is I don’t care if you come around or not. I like the readers, but if you’re getting so stressed then just drop me from your list and be done with it. More than a fact checker you’ve acted like you are this older role model who has the truth, and this young pup just needs to wise up to your ways. My website is about thinking for myself, and yeah, I’m gonna disagree with you. I’m sorry you don’t like the way I’m doing it. Deal with it.

      As a side note, I’m glad you got this new site running. It’s shaping up nicely over this way.