Monterey, CA FTC Frowning On Companies Trying To Keep Generics Off Of The Market

View From A Non-Profit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California There are huge dollars at stake when a patent is expiring and a drug is about to become generic.  The U.S. Supreme Court is now hearing a case regarding whether big pharmaceutical companies can simply pay off competitors to stay out of the market.  This is very lucrative for the drug companies, but at the end of the day it costs insurance companies, Medicare and consumers billions of dollars each year.  It seems as if drug companies have several tricks up their sleeves to continue cornering the market on major brand name drugs which have patents expiring.  The New York Times reported that the Federal  Trade Commission (FTC) is suing to stop one tactic.  They filed suit against drug company  Actelion, charging that the company (like many others) had refused to sell samples of its drugs to competitors so that they can develop generics.  Actelion has refused to turn over samples of its key drug Tracleer (a lung disorder treatment), which is not surprising given that the company is heavily reliant on that pharmaceutical and Zavesca.  The Tracleer patent expires in 2015 and given that the company is charging $79,000/year for each patient taking the drug, it's using desperate tactics to keep its hold on the market.  Zavesca, at $229,000/year, costs even more and its patent expires later this year.  Pharmaceutical companies have even come up with their own lingo for trying to extend a patent's time on the market dubbed "Life Cycle Management."  Legislative efforts to require drug manufacturers to sell samples to generic drug companies have failed twice, after huge lobbying dollars from pharmaceutical companies poured into Washington D.C.  It's a sad situation when companies with the most lobbying dollars win, but maybe the FTC can prevail in Federal Court.