"Priset på medicin baseras inte på kostanden för FoU"

It's a fallacy to suggest that [the pharmaceutical industry], or any industry, prices a product to recapture the R&D budget spent in development. Business doesn't work like that. Those are sunk costs. In other words, [pharmaceutical firms] spent the money and it cannot be recovered no matter what [they] decide to do with pricing.

If we let sunk costs influence our decisions, we would not be evaluating a pricing decision exclusively on the merits of its own business case

Pricing decisions should be based on future possibilities, not biased by 10-year-old decisions.

Skrev Pfizers vd Hank McKinnell i sin bok A Call to Action: Taking Back Healthcare for Future Generations, publicerad maj 2005.

Uppdatering:

Lite siffror från själva Pfizer från 2003:

Intäkter: 45.2 miljarder dollar
Spenderat på forskning: 7.1 miljarder dollar

Alltså ungefär 15.7% av Pfizer intäkter gick till forskning. Jag skulle nog säga att de med god marginal tjänar in pengarna som lagts ut på forskning.

Via Christian Engström.