• naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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    8 months ago

    The WAC (wholesale acquisition cost) is the cost that distributors pay to purchase a drug from the manufacturer. Pharmacies and etc. charge a rather sizable markup on top of the WAC. According to this SEC filing from Coherus, the WAC of Loqtorzi (Toripalimab) is 8892.03 USD. This is public, verifiable information and is lower than what end users will be billed. The WAC provides the lower bound for the cost of Toripalimab in the US.

    Junshi launched Tuoyi in 2019. China published the agreed pricing for these drugs in the 2021-2022 period as part of the NRDL: for a 240mg/6mL bottle, the price is 2100.97 yuan (296.27 USD at today’s exchange rate). I’ve linked the translation, but the original NRDL is cited in the article. China restricts drug sale prices using the NRDL, which dictates how drugs are sold and reimbursed by China’s single-payer system.

    All of this is verifiable using publicly available sources. People on lemmy.world not liking the facts doesn’t make the facts themselves inaccurate.

    Edit: in the best case scenario and taking many liberties with US pharmaceuticals pricing, you might see an up to 50% discount on the WAC of 8892.03 USD under 340B purchasing for low-income Americans (but also, maybe not because 340B discounts might not apply to Toripalimab). This can be viewed as the cost Medicare/Medicaid pays for the drug, I think. That would be most directly comparable to the NRDL price although NRDL is not just for low-income residents in China because of the single-payer system.

    • interceder270@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      So, what exactly about this drug is hard to manufacture? Is it solely the “intellectual property” rights associated with it?

      Or does it require some rare materials or difficult manufacturing process?

      • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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        8 months ago

        Almost all pharmaceuticals are driven by the cost of drug discovery and studies. You want the cost of drugs to be enough to drive investment into new drugs, but not so much that it becomes impractical for people to afford.

        • interceder270@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I mean yeah, the entire point is to maximize profit.

          I was just curious if this was an inflated price due to “intellectual property rights” associated with the drug, which it appears to be.

          I wonder how much it costs to actually manufacture. I feel like more people should understand that before they accept paying $8k or even $800 for a drug.

  • Quereller@lemmy.one
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    8 months ago

    Don’t worry there a re many more checkpoint inhibitors on the market. Optivio, Keytruda etc. So there is healthy competition.

    • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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      8 months ago

      They cite their sources:

      In China, the cost of a single-dose vial of Toripalimab is around 2,000 yuan (US$280), according to Chinese cancer informational websites. The cost of a single-dose vial in the US will wholesale for US$8,892.03, Coherus wrote in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The American price is more than 31 times the price of the same drug marketed in China.

      Ignoring a source because you disagree with their political position rather than the facts being presented is, frankly, dangerous.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Ignoring a source because you disagree with their political position rather than the facts being presented is, frankly, dangerous.

        That is not true at all. Posting content from disreputable sources encourages the uninformed to see the source as reliable when it is not. Posting these stories from propaganda sources is always harmful. There is no excuse for it when you could have simply taken the time to find a legitimate source for it. If none is found, then it would have been more wise to not post it at all.

        You were quick to become offended when the source you posted was called out for its weakness. Instead of being defensive and attacking the commenter who questioned the legitimacy of the source, just own up to the fact that you should have chosen a better source to begin with.

          • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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            8 months ago

            Maybe if the US would start doing something to combat emissions instead of literally increasing the amount of electricity they generate from fossil fuel sources, I can post some pro-US pieces too. US primary energy production from fossil fuels has increased by more than 40% since 2010. The climate is the single biggest issue faced by the world today and the US is more concerned with protecting the profits of billionaire O&G executives than doing anything about it.

        • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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          8 months ago

          Maybe discredit the source, then? The commenter did no work to demonstrate that the statements claimed in the article were illegitimate. It should be trivial, given that the article (and myself) cites an SEC report.

        • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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          8 months ago

          I cited the claim in the article. It’s an entirely fact-based claim. Why are you so offended by facts?

          • spacecowboy@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            The only person who seems offended in this post is you. Find an alternate source, or don’t, but when your only source is an unreliable one, don’t be upset when people don’t take it seriously.

            (None of what I said changes regardless of whether or not your article is 100% factual.)

              • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Fact: you have sex with goats. It’s a fact because I said it is.

                Do you now see why it’s important to have independent verification of facts, especially when the source might be biased? Do you get it now, goatfucker?

                • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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                  8 months ago

                  Last I checked, there’s no SEC filing indicating that I have sex with goats. The evidence is literally public.

              • spacecowboy@sh.itjust.works
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                8 months ago

                Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it “factual”. Get a clue.

                You know exactly what everyone here is saying and you’re not discussing in good faith.

                Your source is biased and lies all the time. What makes this time any different? Use multiple sources stating those same facts and then come back and present your findings.

                Don’t get mad when you use a biased source and nobody believes you.

                • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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                  8 months ago

                  Their source is literally public information. Is an SEC report somehow unreliable, too?

              • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                An unreliable source usually mixes facts with deception or manipulation. Showcasing a fact from an unreliable source does not make that source reliable or fact-based. The people here are not fooled. Please stop. It’s just weird at this point.

      • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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        8 months ago

        That’s not a reference to source, that’s just words that claim these things happened. The only references to that price point seem to be from this article or articles that reference this article.

        Ignoring a source because you disagree with their political position rather than the facts being presented is, frankly, dangerous.

        I did the opposite of ignoring them. I read through and tried to figure out by the sources whether they’re lying.

        Blindly trusting a clearly biased source as you do is way more dangerous. Blindly defending them is worse. But perhaps this data does exist and I just suck at finding it.

        • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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          8 months ago

          It’s an SEC filing. I found the filing. It’s pretty trivial to do so. They gave you all the information needed: who filed it, when they filed it, where they filed it, and the data point they found from the document.

          SCMP isn’t really in the business of making up SEC filings from thin air.

          It’s SCMP, not the Times of Israel.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            8 months ago

            It’s an SEC filing. I found the filing.

            Yet you fail to link to it. Curious, or just some sort of a flex?

            If you found the filing, I fully admit that you are a better googler than I am. Happy?

            It’s SCMP, not the Times of Israel.

            Uhh, yeah. You seemed to have driven on a mine there, comrade. Times of Israel is ranked as more trustworthy than SCMP.

            • naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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              8 months ago

              Look at the top level comments on this post JFC

              SCMP is consistently factual in their reporting. The Times of Israel consistently reports IDF conjecture as fact.