Of the more than 1,600 generic approved drugs, over SEVEN HUNDRED are not on the market!

43%. Not for sale. Just being sat on. Which means a lot of drugs have ZERO COMPETITION and nothing forcing them to lower prices through active competition. There are several reasons for this, but I suspect regardless of what is said that the biggie is to simply keep prices high as long as possible on the newer and patented drugs in order to make as much profit as possible.

Cynical much? As a matter of fact, yes.

Now, I can respect that it costs a tremendous amount of money to develop a drug, test it, and go through the approval process. And not all drugs survive testing or approval, or may have a flaw come through after approval that results in the drug being taken off the market (can you say 'thalidomide'?). So not only do profits have to recoup the costs of THAT drug, they have to recoup FAILED drug costs AND fund new development AND provide some profits.

But there's one flaw in this little scenario: a lot of this development work is being done through the National Institutes of Health and other Federal research programs, paid for by tax dollars of citizens of the USA. So their development costs are purely negligible: they're buying a license that's no where near the development costs that the government paid.

One example of some of the shenanigans pulled: asthma rescue inhalers, commonly known as albuterol inhalers. They were so utterly generic that if they weren't free, they were $5. Long out of patent, so anyone can make them, but they're not going to make a huge amount of profit on them.

WELL, WE CAN'T HAVE THAT! Our MBAs say we gotta make as much profit as possible for our shareholders! That's MBA School 101! So they go to the EPA and FDA and say 'Oh noes! Those nasty rescue inhalers are so old that they're using CFCs and destroying the ozone layer! What are the kittehs gonna do! No can haz burgers! But we haz NEW inhaler that haz NO Nasty CFCs! We just need to be granted a patent and exclusive licensing rights and a ban on the old inhalers, sign here please.'

And inhalers, which are critical for some people, are now $30. I have one in my pocket, one on my bedside table, and one in my computer bag. While I don't have the deadly severe form of asthma, it's kinda important for my continued normally reasonably good health.

Well, now we're seeing the ultimate expression. Buy the patent and licensing for the generic while you also hold a nigh identical drug, and just sit on the generic! Ensure that you cannot have a competitor.

Pretty damn slick, and hopefully they will be damned in their own personal hell hereafter.

With a little luck the next administration will do something about this shit.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/drug-companies-are-sitting-on-generics-43-of-recently-approved-arent-for-sale/

A fair amount of work but well rewarded!

Even if I did reward myself.

Last night at 2am I made a chocolate mousse pie. This morning, almost directly after I got up, I made a Krusteaz' orange/cranberry muffin mix, adding half a cup of chocolate chips (a half and half mix of semi-sweet and bittersweet) and a quarter cup of finely diced walnuts. Because of the add'l ingredients, instead of getting a dozen muffins I got a baker's dozen plus one. My wife was taking the dogs out for a run just as they were coming out of the oven, so I grabbed one, threw it in a ziploc sandwich bag, and ran it out to the car for her.

They were quite awesome. And a total cost of under $5 for 14 muffins! (excluding cost of eggs and oil and....)

After she got back, we drained and flushed the hot water heater. It'd been making popping sounds while heating, and was barely 18 months old. The procedure isn't difficult, took maybe half an hour or so, I did have to buy a 10' garden hose which set me back all of $8 at Home Despot, but now we have it and won't have to buy it again as we're planning on flushing it annually starting summer of '20.

Having completed that, I sliced up the chocolate mousse pie. Normally I cut it into 16ths, but I went ahead and saved two pieces as 8ths as I thought I/we earned it.

Man, I/we do love my chocolate mousse pie! The little bit of chili powder really sets off the chocolate, which is also a 50/50 mix of bitter and semi- Ghirardelli, plus cutting it down from three egg whites to two to stiffen it up a bit makes it absolute killer. And I added a pretty healthy amount of Mexican vanilla extract. And the recipe comes together pretty quick: with practice you can do it in about 30-45 minutes, but then it needs to set in the fridge for a good 3-4 hours, so it's a good one to make the night before. It's also good for parties to make in parfait glasses, I've done that once or twice with crumbled chocolate Oreo cookie crust in the bottom, which makes it a lot of fun.