Medical Monopolies
MidWestern Dr Substack
If you take a step back, it’s clear our medical system has failed disastrously as the cost for it keeps going up (on average 4.8% per year), but the quality of care gets worse (e.g., despite spending far more than any other country, currently we rank 69th in healthcare outcomes)
To a large extent, I believe this resulted from a misguided attempt by Congress in 1962 to prevent toxic drugs from entering America where they not only gave the FDA the power to block anything they deemed unsafe, but also gave the FDA the discretion to determine what constituted a pharmaceutical being “effective.” In turn, the FDA decided that extensive and costly (and not necessarily relevant) data needed to be compiled, which resulted in the cost of drugs skyrocketing and the number of new drugs reaching the market grinding to a halt.
''Note: as best as I can tell (as I have to infer the number from incomplete data), the 1962 law caused the
cost of bringing a drug to market to go up roughly 1000 times
and take almost 10 times as long.''
This was a huge problem as (due to the immense cost of developing new drugs) it effectively created a “pay-to-play” system that:
- •Encouraged pharmaceutical companies to doctor trials and bribe drug regulators to get their drugs approved (as otherwise they could not afford to risk sinking that much money into developing them).
- •Encouraged pharmaceutical companies to doctor trials and bribe drug regulators to get their drugs approved (as otherwise, they could not afford to risk sinking that much money into developing them).
- Encouraged pharmaceutical companies to pursue drugs that were likely to get approved (e.g., by being very similar to an existing drug or by having a very minor specific benefit that could be “proven”) rather than maverick ones that could significantly improve the standard of care (particularly since doing so would displace other costly drug franchises and hence motivate their manufacturers to lobby against the novel drug's approval).
- Changed the pharmaceutical business to revolve around sales rather than drug efficacy, as this was something that could be reliably implemented (regardless of how ineffective or unneeded the drug was) and hence made the business remain sustainable.
- Incentivized the pharmaceutical companies to spend a lot of money eliminating “unapproved” competitors from the marketplace (e.g., by lobbying the government to target those who didn’t pay to play).
8X increase cost of US health care vs the Gross Domestic Product since increase in FDA power
US govt is the source of the chart
30 years later, increasing cost of US health care no longer resulted in substantial life extension
VitaminDwiki - FDA - many studies
Table of contents as of Nov 2024
Some of the studies with FDA in the title
- FDA study of 4 million children found 2 COVID-19 vaccination red flags, but continue to push boosters – May 2024
- FDA drug to TREAT child Type 2 diabetes (based on 1 trial of only 50) – June 2023
- FDA hired a person to study flu vaccine effectiveness, found problems, was fired
- New FDA head chosen because he had the fewest ties to big Pharma - Nov 2021
- FDA drug section gets 75% of its income from Big Pharma - Oct 2022
- FDA approved 5-11 vaccine booster (based tiny unpublished study without asking advisory panel) May 2022