The Medical Humanities Blog Features Juvan's Health Law Update
The Medical Humanities Blog recently featured Juvan's Health Law Update. The blog is written by Daniel Goldberg, a second-year student in the Ph.D program in medical humanities at University of Texas Medical Branch's Institute for Medical Humanities. Daniel is also an attorney and currently serves as a Research Professor with the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. Along with top-notch commentary, the blog includes links to many worthwhile medical humanities and health law and policy sites. Here's a look at Daniel's article:
Generic & Brand-Drug Agreements to Delay Market Entry
Jayne Juvan has several interesting posts (can't find permalinks) relating to the possibility of legislation prohibiting negotiations between brand-drug and generic manufacturers that have the objective of delaying the latter's entry into a given therapeutic market.
Consumer group advocates have argued that the current system favors both generic and brand name companies while detrimentally impacting consumers who are forced to front the high cost of brand named drugs while the delay is in effect. Others, such as Bill Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana, believe that such deals are actually pro-consumer. In the Bloomberg article, Tauzin is quoted as saying that the payments "can benefit consumers'' by ending costly patent litigation that can cause longer delays in marketing generic drugs and can exhaust the litigants' "valuable resources."
I know some, but not a great deal, about antitrust, but there is a fairly extensive argument in the literature suggesting that antitrust law ought to be viewed contextually, at least in part according to the enforcement priorities of the particular administration charged with applying the laws.
*Shameless Plug*: I've written about this precisely in the context of the types of deals Juvan is noting. In the paper, I examine how the post 9/11 context influenced such deals particularly with respect to Cipro (which regularly made national headlines as a frontline treatment for anthrax bioterror attacks). Details on exactly how such deals delay market entry is also covered, as is the intersection between the innovation incentives of the patent system and the anticompetitive ideals of the antitrust laws (all examined in social context).
I ultimately conclude that such agreements are anticompetitive. Thoughts?
You're conclusion is probably correct, Daniel, but I think these agreements are here to stay, at least in the short term. Thanks for featuring the article!
