Hearing on nitty gritty laws that allow pharmaceutical firms to keep prices high via anti-competitive practices. judiciary.house.gov/calendar/event…
These members don't understand product hopping. The scheme is that when a doctor writes a prescription, a branded drug can only be substituted with an identical generic that’s the same dosage form. The new product intentionally screws that equivalence up.
So @DarrellIssa @RepDanBishop et al understand non-drug patents, but Hatch-Waxman creates a special drug patent process to move to generics. They are right the FDA and patent office should stop allowing all sorts of nonsense patents though.
Sometimes the new product is the same or worse. Take Asacol, for which the 'innovation' for the new product was to take something that was in tablet and put it into a capsule. Voila, new patent and old product off the market. media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/1… 
Now @tedlieu is acting very concerned about the rights of pharmaceutical companies to lie about generic competitive products so they can keep people paying for high-priced pharmaceuticals.
All of these members are arguing about pharmaceuticals, using the metaphor of Ford releasing a new truck and encouraging people to upgrade. But there are no generic trucks and no branded trucks! Pharma is weird and pharma patents are weird.
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