they have grown so spoiled, after 40 years of a wink and a nod "regulation".. any resistance, at all.. produces 100 letters against Khan in the WSJ
simply spoiled children that buy the ideology of government bad.. so they can get away with the most blatantly illegal. and tell themselves, they are the victims, when someone has the balls to remind them of the standing laws.
fo so long, I trained my brain to resolve all this corruption as grand conspiracy, but occam's razor explains it simply. yes, there is a tremendous amount of conspiracy just the same, but the main driver.. is spoiled children.
What kind of society allows marketing/pushing of drugs? We (and NZ) seem to be the only ones.
Drug ads cost billions and are paid with a hidden tax on each drug. The ads don't improve our healthcare system, rather, they are dangerous for our psychological well-being (they actually have diabetic patients dancing in a musical because they are taking the drug - sick?). Our medical data is not ours, just as your social media data isn't. Our corporatocracy's sole purpose is to monetize everything - profit above everything.
Please do a report on the pharma generic drug industry. There's no oversight - they can use any filler/buffer/additive they want - some are toxic, and really bad people run the firms. Bloomberg, WaPo, and the Pentagon are noticing and, like climate change and forever chemicals, it's much worse than you can imagine.
Hope the FTC prevails. Not sure how the trial will affect the CRO part of their business but the consolidation in the industry is scary. Also, glad to learn about the Sackler connection. If I have to change jobs - I know not to go to IQVIA😊
Good piece, Matt. I appreciate you finding out whatever you could and bringing it to light. What is it going to take to have more default transparency in these trials?
Wow you nailed it. Was adjacent to this in the IMS days selling analytics to research. But "sales and marketing" was seen as a new lucrative niche. Exists only to get drs to push scripts: 50% of the time a patient asks for a drug, it's prescribed. Pharmas have the market covered - to consumers who ask and drs who comply.
I know this isn't the focus of the current case, but isn't there an argument to be made that any business with 50-70% profit margins is a de facto monopoly? No business with real competition would ever have profit margins that high.
We are also our own worst enemies. The vast majority of prescriptions are unnecessary but yet we not only fill the prescriptions and take them but renew them and the very worst ask for them or hope we are prescribed a drug as proof that we are indeed sick but now on the way to recovery. Think of antibiotics for clearly viral illness or blood pressure meds for marginally high blood pressures or cholesterol drugs for marginally high cholesterol levels with poor science on the effects of the very complex processes of blood flow. The number of people who need and take a drug for a valid and targeted purpose is mindbendingly small. But pharmaceuticals is huge.
Really interesting case, Matt. I would think HIPAA laws preclude our preclude our personally identifiable information (PII) from being attached to those ad tech metrics. Maybe patients' names are anonymized, but the ad tech companies view granular demographics? Or maybe they found loopholes in HIPAA.
I wonder how many more years the cornucopia of brazen "hot docs" will last. Clearly taking a while for monopolists to figure out they need better messaging discipline & early antitrust counsel to pull off anticompetitive capers in the Wu, Khan & Kanter era. An ounce of internal training is worth a pound of post hoc expert sophistry that's vulnerable to being undermined by candid docs from loose-lipped execs...
Could this be solved, BY isnt research being done on or at College`s level. in form of Grants by tax payers?
IF and when Multi Colleges doing their own research, studies, new things- findings and so-on. Can`nt Gov. then just pull say its 100 Schools. How hard will that be. to fine new things, or use of data research even. Then it would not be in one hand.
Can you please explain the role that IQVIA plays in the advertising to doctors in other countries as well. At first this sounded like a US phenomenon, but if other countries are effected too, how does this work? Are there other countries that are trying to take this on as well? Or, is this more a USA problem?
"They have built a Legal Paradigm that presumes records collected about us, do not belong to us" -E. Snowden
How can we opt out of our individual data being used? What case could we make there and to what agencies?
you had me at "Lasso" and DeepIntent". Sounds like a Bond movie.
they have grown so spoiled, after 40 years of a wink and a nod "regulation".. any resistance, at all.. produces 100 letters against Khan in the WSJ
simply spoiled children that buy the ideology of government bad.. so they can get away with the most blatantly illegal. and tell themselves, they are the victims, when someone has the balls to remind them of the standing laws.
fo so long, I trained my brain to resolve all this corruption as grand conspiracy, but occam's razor explains it simply. yes, there is a tremendous amount of conspiracy just the same, but the main driver.. is spoiled children.
it's high time for adults to enter the room
What kind of society allows marketing/pushing of drugs? We (and NZ) seem to be the only ones.
Drug ads cost billions and are paid with a hidden tax on each drug. The ads don't improve our healthcare system, rather, they are dangerous for our psychological well-being (they actually have diabetic patients dancing in a musical because they are taking the drug - sick?). Our medical data is not ours, just as your social media data isn't. Our corporatocracy's sole purpose is to monetize everything - profit above everything.
Please do a report on the pharma generic drug industry. There's no oversight - they can use any filler/buffer/additive they want - some are toxic, and really bad people run the firms. Bloomberg, WaPo, and the Pentagon are noticing and, like climate change and forever chemicals, it's much worse than you can imagine.
Hope the FTC prevails. Not sure how the trial will affect the CRO part of their business but the consolidation in the industry is scary. Also, glad to learn about the Sackler connection. If I have to change jobs - I know not to go to IQVIA😊
Good piece, Matt. I appreciate you finding out whatever you could and bringing it to light. What is it going to take to have more default transparency in these trials?
A thousand times thank you. This is eye-opening.
Wow you nailed it. Was adjacent to this in the IMS days selling analytics to research. But "sales and marketing" was seen as a new lucrative niche. Exists only to get drs to push scripts: 50% of the time a patient asks for a drug, it's prescribed. Pharmas have the market covered - to consumers who ask and drs who comply.
I know this isn't the focus of the current case, but isn't there an argument to be made that any business with 50-70% profit margins is a de facto monopoly? No business with real competition would ever have profit margins that high.
Great insight as always. Would love to see your breakdown on Vivek Ramswamy's Roivant and numerous "Vant' subsidiaries and the claimed pump and dump schemes where the model seems to be much more focused on raising money and selling off stakes than selling products. Curious to hear your thoughts. https://fortune.com/2023/06/14/vivek-ramaswamy-is-threatening-gop-heavyweights-in-the-polls-but-his-business-record-doesnt-live-up-to-the-hype/.
We are also our own worst enemies. The vast majority of prescriptions are unnecessary but yet we not only fill the prescriptions and take them but renew them and the very worst ask for them or hope we are prescribed a drug as proof that we are indeed sick but now on the way to recovery. Think of antibiotics for clearly viral illness or blood pressure meds for marginally high blood pressures or cholesterol drugs for marginally high cholesterol levels with poor science on the effects of the very complex processes of blood flow. The number of people who need and take a drug for a valid and targeted purpose is mindbendingly small. But pharmaceuticals is huge.
Really interesting case, Matt. I would think HIPAA laws preclude our preclude our personally identifiable information (PII) from being attached to those ad tech metrics. Maybe patients' names are anonymized, but the ad tech companies view granular demographics? Or maybe they found loopholes in HIPAA.
I wonder how many more years the cornucopia of brazen "hot docs" will last. Clearly taking a while for monopolists to figure out they need better messaging discipline & early antitrust counsel to pull off anticompetitive capers in the Wu, Khan & Kanter era. An ounce of internal training is worth a pound of post hoc expert sophistry that's vulnerable to being undermined by candid docs from loose-lipped execs...
Could this be solved, BY isnt research being done on or at College`s level. in form of Grants by tax payers?
IF and when Multi Colleges doing their own research, studies, new things- findings and so-on. Can`nt Gov. then just pull say its 100 Schools. How hard will that be. to fine new things, or use of data research even. Then it would not be in one hand.
Can you please explain the role that IQVIA plays in the advertising to doctors in other countries as well. At first this sounded like a US phenomenon, but if other countries are effected too, how does this work? Are there other countries that are trying to take this on as well? Or, is this more a USA problem?