Special Reports & Tweets - 20140122_SpecialReport_Alex
Aired: 2014-01-22
Duration: 01:57


=== Skyrocketing Antibiotic Prices (01:57) ===

[00:00:00]  It's strange that back in the fall there was one story after another in every country that Big Pharma was finished with antibiotics.
[00:00:07]  No more research on new drugs to replace those that bacteria have developed resistance.
[00:00:11]  And they were going to focus solely on viruses and vaccines.
[00:00:15]  It was strange enough that they would declare they were no longer even concerned about controlling bacterial infections.
[00:00:19]  What you may not have noticed is the skyrocketing price and limited availability of doxycycline, a common antibiotic.
[00:00:27]  Oxycycline is often prescribed in the early stages of exposure to Lyme disease, as a prophylactic for malaria, as a follow-up to dental work, and many other uses.
[00:00:36]  And a prescription that used to cost $4 to $5 now costs between $160 and $200, if you
[00:00:43]  can find a supply.
[00:00:45]  There was an abrupt spike in cost about a year ago.
[00:00:48]  The LA Times reported on it.
[00:00:49]  Then a couple of months later, the CDC pointed out that there was a shortage.
[00:00:52]  But after a year, the price is still holding firm at about a 50-fold increase.
[00:00:59]  If there were a free market, a competitive free market, in generic drugs, companies would enter the market, increase supply to take advantage of the higher price, and the price would go down.
[00:01:09]  But not in the consolidated cartel of pharmaceuticals.
[00:01:12]  And it's not a case of restricting generics in order to drive people to new, more expensive drugs.
[00:01:17]  In this case, they're not interested in providing new antibiotics.
[00:01:20]  So when a commonly used drug increases 40 to 50 times in a price spike and stays there, the question is, is the pharmaceutical cartel simply price gouging?
[00:01:30]  Or is this a part of a push to get people to buy more medical insurance?
[00:01:34]  Or is it something more sinister, like are they removing all antibiotics to intentionally leave the population helpless to a superbug, or to a weaponized bacterial outbreak?
[00:01:44]  Whatever's behind this, antibiotics have been overprescribed, they've been misused with livestock, and now we have strains that are created that are drug-resistant, and the response of the pharmaceuticals is to gouge people on price and abandon research.