Can anyone in the know tell me the profit incentive for combo vaxes?

[xmasbaby7]

Is it that they can be priced equal to the number of traditional shots and created a larger profit margin?

Do studies show it would increase vax compliance?

Is there an incentive by the FDA/CDC simply to create new vaxes like there are for prescriptions?

Is there an advantage for reps to market new products with more face time to replace competitors existing vaccines?

Just wondering. Clearly they couldn't do it if it wasn't a better business model, but what is the advantage?

Have we ever had a pharma rep parent here? I don't recall one after four years.

[Deborah]

some advantages of combo vaccines:

new patent, new price, exclusivity until patent runs out

government interest in more vaccines in fewer doses (less pricks)

many parents count just the needles and have no idea how many different vaccines their babes are receiving

handy for confusing the issue--how can anyone ever figure out which vaccine caused the problem--this is also used in cancer cases to deflect lawsuits--if a person is exposed to 50 chemicals on the job and then gets brain cancer, you have to prove precisely which chemical did it, or you have no case. Ass backwards, but this sort of thing works out well for the drug pushers.

[Turquesa]

Originally Posted by xmasbaby7

Is it that they can be priced equal to the number of traditional shots and created a larger profit margin?

There's a wider profit margin because, as Deborah said, a new patent is issued. Newly patented drugs cannot be sold as generics. Last I read in Marcia Angell's book, this status quo lasts for 20 years. I don't know if that's the incentive for manufacturing these vaxes, but it's plausibly one of them.

Do studies show it would increase vax compliance?

I don't know, but I, too, am extremely interested in learning the answer. If there is a statistically significant number of parents like me, (doubtful, but maybe), they have their LOs on a delayed/selective schedule. If the only choice is to have a combo cocktail that included vaxes that they wanted to avoid, they may forego the vaxing altogether. (The AAP advices state health boards on which shots to order and use to stock doctors offices, hence the lack of choice for health care consumers). I know that I would skip it.

Is there an advantage for reps to market new products with more face time to replace competitors existing vaccines?

If I understand your question correctly, Marcia Angell describes these as "me-too" drugs. (She's a pretty credible source, BTW, as the former NEJM editor). Pharma companies re-invent their own or each others' drugs (with enough variation to avoid a patent violation) and market them in order to acquire yet another patent.

Have we ever had a pharma rep parent here? I don't recall one after four years.

I believe somebody once posted here claiming to be a former Pharma PR person. I haven't heard from this person in some time, though.

[xmasbaby7]

The patent incentive I was thinking about, but I didn't think, forgive me, that there were generic vaxes like drugs. Is the tetanus shot, for example, really generic, like penicillan? I feel like we are always using name brand version of the same vax decade after decade.