clifto wrote:
> SMS ???? ? wrote:
>> There are some good case studies of pricing in the Harvard Business
>> Review. The Tagamet versus Zantac is a classic.
>
> Is that on line somewhere? I've always had a suspicion that Tagamet was
> the start of the outrageous pricing of drugs we see today. I remember it
> was $30 a month as opposed to a typically expensive prescription of $12
> or thereabouts. I remember also that they promised the price would drop
> like a rock when R&D was paid off, but the price did nothing but go up,
> quintupling just before a generic became available.

It's the opposite of what you're thinking. The head of Glaxo was being
pressured to price Zantac at a lower price than Tagamet, and instead he
decided to charge a premium, because Zantac was a better drug for the
same condition.