Lipitor commercials

[Iwillnevergiveup]

stressing stick with Lipitor if your doctor prescribed it - there is no generic for it. If you take anything else, you're taking a different medication.

Hear them all the time - patent running out? More damn scare tactics.

[Progressive_In_NC]

1. Patent expires mid-late 2010....

The time it is a comin.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

2. Aha

Greedy bastards.:puke:

[DefenseLawyer]

3. Tell your doctor if you have liver cancer

Wait, isn't he supposed to tell me that?

[Robb]

9. LOL

:rofl:

[Mz Pip]

4. Perhaps we need to be asking

why drug companies run expensive ads for medicines that people cannot buy on their own. How many millions are spent encouraging patients to annoy their doctors for medicines they might not even need?

I lost all sympathy for the drug companies when I learned that they spend more on advertising then the do on research. Screw them for trying to turn doctors into pushers.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

5. Exactly!

And if patients are demanding drugs they see advertised on teevee, the pharmaceutical sales reps don't have to work so hard, do they?

[PA Democrat]

11. The US is one of only two

industrialized countries that permit direct consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals.

That's why our drugs are so expensive: advertising expenses, not R& D as they want you to believe. Someone has to pay for all of those Viagra and Lipitor commercials.

[prostomulgus]

6. Why do we even have drug companies???

After all, there are plenty of government scientists and labs. They could come up with drugs just as easily as any company scientists. It seems like medicine discovery and production is too important to be left to for-profit corporations, interested only in the bottom line for the speculators and stock holders.

I would like to see the government assume a greater role in medicine discovery/production/distribution. It would be fairer (people wouldn't be denied the medicine they need because of their race, sex, or "documentation"), cheaper (there wouldn't be any expensive TV and print ads), and faster (nobody would wait until a patent expires before they started development of new medicines).

I say let the corporations go ply their greed trade somewhere else.

[markbark]

7. and of course there's the small problem of

"There's no cash in the cure"

If you invent a drug that cures a disease, then you can only sell it once.
If you invent a drug that mitigates a disease, but then you have to take it for the rest of your life (think BP meds, insulin, etc)
THEN you have a cash cow that just keep on givin'!

Which path do you suppose big pharma takes?

--MAB

[prostomulgus]

10. Good Point. Strengthens the argument.

[Davis_X_Machina]

8. For most patients, a statin is a statin...

..and you can save a bundle with simvastatin (generic Zocor).

Watch for a molecularly nearly-identical follow-on to Lipitor soon.
This maneuver worked with omeprazole (Prilosec) when its patent expired -- poof! Now it's Nexium.

[Mz Pip]

13. I had a prescription for

simvastatin. I think it was still pretty expensive, though I have drug coverage. I lasted about 3 weeks on the stuff before I started having negative reactions.

I know my doctor wants me to take something to lower my cholesterol but if I have a bad reaction to one of them I sort of suspect i'll have a bad reaction to all of them. Oh well.

[abumbyanyothername]

12. If you talk to a Dr. you will be prescribed Lipitor.

Or at least that is my experience.

Not sure what Lipitor had to do with my ear infection.