How dreadful! Big drug firms launch cheap versions of their pills!

What right have they??!! A big whine below emanating from haters of the drug industry. Just the phrase "Big Pharma" warns you of Leftist bias ahead

Many of Big Pharma's biggest blockbusters will soon lose their patent protection. Deloitte, a consultancy, estimates that $55 billion of products will go off patent in 2009 and will then face competition. At the same time, pharma bosses are being asked to defend patents in costly legal battles against an increasingly confident and litigious generics industry. As generics firms evolve from mere copycats into innovators in their own right, many such firms—led by Israel's Teva, India's Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy's Laboratories—are vigorously challenging patents.....

Under American laws designed to encourage generic drugs, which save money for patients, the first generic maker to win regulatory approval for its version of any given branded drug is supposed to enjoy a six-month monopoly. This promised pot of gold was designed to support small generics firms—but Big Pharma has found a loophole. It is pre-emptively launching generic versions of its own branded pills, which wipes out those six months of monopoly profits and undermines the economics of generics firms.

Merck, a big American pharmaceuticals firm, is soon expected to launch an authorised generic version of Fosamax, an osteoporosis drug that is due to lose patent protection in February. A recent survey of global branded-drugs firms by Cutting Edge Information, a consultancy, found that a third of them had launched authorised generics between 2005 and 2007—and the number will grow to 44% between 2008 and 2010. Pfizer has set up an in-house division to handle such generics.

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Australia: Emergency wards facing crisis

The good ol' government "planning" again. This is a government that REDUCES the number of beds when it rebuilds a hospital! Despite steady and quite foreseeable population growth

A DRAMATIC increase in the number of patients turning up at public hospital emergency departments has stretched the system to its limit, says [Queensland] State Health Minister Stephen Robertson. He has called on Queenslanders to give overworked hospital doctors and nurses a break after a survey showed 75 per cent of those who go to public emergency rooms for treatment are there because they couldn't get access to a GP or didn't want to pay doctors' fees.

The number of people who sought treatment at Queensland hospital emergency departments last year increased 8.7 per cent from 2006 - nearly five times the usual annual increase, and four times the state's population growth for the period. The flu epidemic in August boosted the figures and the state's 23 largest public hospital emergency departments treated nearly 1 million patients in 2007. "This is what we have to try and deal with . . . we can't just keep forever expanding our emergency departments to cope with ever-increasing numbers," Mr Robertson said. "We have to find ways to deal with this very challenging, increasing demand."

The survey, commissioned by Australia's health ministers, revealed that one out of every three emergency room patients thought they actually needed hospital treatment. But about two out of three went to hospitals because their doctor was not on duty, or that doctor's clinic was closed. The overload has flowed through to add months to elective surgery waiting lists, hospital staff say.

Mr Robertson said new and refurbished emergency departments would be the priority in the Government's record $5 billion capital works spending in 2007-08. "But the problem is that emergency medicine is one of those specialties where there is a worldwide shortage," he said. Mr Robertson today will release the public hospitals' performance report for the December quarter. It will reveal that 929,093 people attended emergency departments in 2007, up from 854,550 in 2006. The 82,774 December total in emergency rooms was the highest in Queensland history.

Mr Robertson said the number of doctors in Queensland had increased from 8453 in 2001 to 9352 in 2006. But the number of GPs per 100,000 people had fallen from 238 to 227, and an increase in the number of female GPs and an ageing male sector had resulted in a decrease in doctor-patient hours.

AMA Queensland president Ross Cartmill disagreed with Mr Robertson that people attending hospital did not need treatment. He estimated that less than 5 per cent should have seen a GP first. "The fundamental issues in our Accidents and Emergencies are not enough staff and a lack of beds."

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