"You get what you pay for", the more expensive the medicine, the better the curative effect and the better the quality.
Rumors:
As a special commodity, drugs should be evaluated according to their efficacy and safety, but the price is not directly related to them. The formation mechanism of drug price is complex, which is determined by factors such as R&D cost, raw material cost, process preparation, sales link and even policy orientation, and can be roughly expressed by the following formula.
Drug price = R&D cost+production cost+sales cost+others
When a brand-new drug is developed and successfully put on the market, pharmaceutical companies often set a higher price during the patent protection period of the new drug because of the huge initial R&D investment (ranging from hundreds of millions to tens of billions) in order to recover the cost as soon as possible. This brand-new drug is called "original drug". With the end of the patent protection period, other companies can copy the original drug, because the cost of copying is much lower than that of the original drug (usually it costs several million, and it is often only necessary to carry out strict bioequivalence tests to prove that the generic drug is bioequivalent to the original drug), so the price of the generic drug is lower than that of the original drug, just like the Swiss original drug and the Indian life-saving generic drug described in the movie Dying to Survive. For most drugs, there is no significant difference between the clinical efficacy of generic drugs and the original drugs. The use of generic drugs can greatly reduce patients' drug costs and medical insurance burden. Developed countries such as the United States vigorously promote the policy of using generic drugs in their own countries to save medical expenses. In recent years, China has been continuously promoting the consistency evaluation of the quality and efficacy of generic drugs, improving the supply guarantee and use policy of generic drugs, and ensuring the safety of people's medication.
In addition to research and development costs, the sales link is also an important reason for the difference in drug prices. As we all know, the more intermediate channels of sales, the higher the price that is ultimately passed on to consumers, and the heavier the burden on patients. In recent years, the state has issued a series of policies and measures to reduce the burden of people's drug use, such as zero addition of drugs in public medical institutions (hospitals buy drugs and sell them to patients at the purchase price, which is unprofitable), and centralized procurement of drugs by the state (for chronic diseases with huge dosage, medical institutions purchase drugs directly from pharmaceutical companies in the form of national groups, eliminating intermediate sales links), which has greatly reduced drug prices and benefited the people.
To sum up, there are many factors that form the price of drugs, not the more expensive the better. It should be purchased and used reasonably under the guidance of Dr. Yamatonokusushi.
Rumor expert: Yu Hengyi, pharmacist in charge of tongji hospital affiliated to Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Expert: Zhao Huanyu, deputy director of Pharmacy Department of Beijing Tongren Hospital.
Producer: Cop China-Scientific Refutation