Flip on Pemberwick

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14 Rockland Place (the Pemberwick, not Old Greenwich Rockland Place) reports a contract after 24 days on the market; asking price, $1.895 million. Its builder paid $500,000 for what was then a 852 sq. ft., 2 bedroom, 1 bath home in July 2022, took out a $325,000 mortgage, and then totally renovated it, expanding it to 3,986 sq. ft. and made it a four bedroom, four bath house. It looks like Home Depot quality finishes — nothing wrong with that, but it certainly kept costs down — so he probably doing very well on this project.

Can’t say I’d pay nearly $2 million to live in Pemberwick, but it seems that someone is about to.

(original, 2022)

(original)


Those new negotiated prices for ten popular drugs? Their patents are about to expire, and cheaper generics will replace them, regardless..

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PowerLine

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Scott Johnson in 2024 Election, Biden Administration, Kamala Harris, Medicare

Big Fakers versus Big Pharma

John A. Clifford is of counsel at Merchant and Gould in Phoenix. He is a member of the Arizona and U.S. Patent Bars. I got to know and respect Jack on the other side of a case premised on the law of intellectual property.
Jack writes to comment on the claim made by Vice President Harris last week that the Biden/Harris administration is “lowering prescription drug costs.” Jack wants it to be noted: “I write as an individual and not on behalf of my employer or any client of that law firm. This is not a legal opinion. I simply asked AI to review the published literature available and tell me when the U.S. patents on these drugs expire. Such information is usually in the annual reports of drug makers and other reliable places. Before making any business decision on this topic, one should review the source documents themselves and not rely on AI or my comment alone.” I thought readers might find his comment (below the break) of interest.

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Both President Biden and Vice President Harris spoke at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland this past Thursday. In their speeches (White House transcript here) they touted the administration’s negotiation of dramatic price reductions on ten pharmaceutical drugs, allegedly saving consumers and Medicare billions of dollars. But as Biden himself noted, the price reductions do not take effect until January 1, 2026. As a patent attorney with some understanding of how things work, I wondered what was going on. Why wait to save billions of dollars?

The agreement covers ten drugs, all of which are covered by one or more U.S. patents. Patents give the owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using or selling an infringing product for a limited time, normally something like 20 years, although with pharmaceuticals the period of exclusivity can be longer for various reasons.

In looking into this claimed Biden/Harris achievement I learned that eight of the ten drugs are covered by patents that expire in 2026 or before. Only one of the ten, Imbruvica, has a patent with many years left to run, and the price reduction negotiated for that drug is the lowest percentage price drop of the group.

Once a drug patent expires generic drug makers are free to enter the market with a generic equivalent, usually at a much lower price. The U.S. government has the details of the drug price reductions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act signed in August of 2022 here: Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program: Negotiated Prices for Initial Price Applicability Year 2026. Included there is this handy chart:

I propose adding another column showing when the U.S. patents on those drugs expire. It looks like this:

Januvia 2026
Novolog 2024
Farxiga 2025
Enbrel 2010-2029 (this one is complicated)
Jardiance 2025
Stelara 2023 (although a pay-to-delay agreement pushes competition off until 2025)
Xarelto 2024
Eliquis 2026
Entresto 2025
Imbruvica 2036

It is well known that generic drug manufacturers often enter the market with equivalent compounds after patents expire once they receive the required FDA approval for their versions. That usually leads to meaningful price reductions for consumers and Medicare through competition. History shows those price reductions normally are in the range of 34 percent to 68 percent in the U.S. The data can be found here, again published by the government.

The fact that the federal government can now negotiate directly with drug makers for lower prices may be significant, but for these ten drugs it is likely similar price reductions would have followed anyway once the relevant patents expired. The effectiveness of the administration on LOWERING PRESCRIPTION DRUG COSTS as claimed in the placards surrounding her at Thursday’s rally must be less than advertised. It’s like claiming an extension of the law of gravity, but not effective until January 1, 2026.

Your body, her choice

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Uninjected? You Need Not Apply to Harris Campaign

The Harris campaign has a job listing for a “National Booker,” tasked with working “with the Surrogates Communications Director and Deputy Communications Director to execute Harris for President’s strategy for deploying surrogates and allies across national and regional media outlets.”…

In the fine print at the bottom of the listing, the campaign makes it clear that it also expects the would-be employee to be completely caught up on his or her coronavirus vaccinations.

The requirement reads:

Harris for President requires all employees to be “up to date” on COVID-19 vaccination status as prescribed by the CDC as a condition of employment, unless otherwise prohibited by applicable law. If you seek a reasonable accommodation in relation to the campaign’s COVID-19 policy, you should speak to the HR Department prior to reporting to an office location.

The job listing can be found here.

In the Demmerkrat world, virtue signaling trumps science, every time.

The “vaccine” neither prevents infection nor stops it from being passed on, so there is no possible benefit to an organization requiring its staffer to subject themselves to injection, except as a loyalty test; an updated SS armpit tattoo, in fact.

Pending

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21 Kenilworth Terrace, $6.995 million, pending after 95 days. Built as a summer house in 1893, previous owners tried for $3.995 million in 2015 before finally selling it to these owners for $2.4 million in 2020. They’ve obviously put a lot of money into restoring it, and they’re about to be repaid for their efforts.

The place still lacks a garage, but one can’t really expect that luxury in moderate-income housing.

Kampallanomics: food inflation is even worse than her handlers admit. Ooooh, those greedy capitalists!

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The actual rise in food costs since February, 2021 is 44%

Even the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post could not stomach the new proposal from Kamala Harris to place price controls on food. The headline of the opinion piece from Catherine Rampell read:

“When your opponent calls you a ‘communist,’ maybe don’t try price controls?”

Food prices are indeed out of control, and in fact far worse than the official CPI statistics convey. Those numbers admit that grocery prices have risen +20% since Harris became vice president.

But Harris’ own Department of Agriculture provides a much worse – and more accurate – take on grocery inflation since she and Biden took office. The USDA “thrifty plan” that represents a frugal basket of food for a family of four has skyrocketed from $675 per month in January of 2021 to $975 per month now. That $300 increase represents a stunning 44% increase ….

The USDA report is pretty interesting and yes, it does show a 44% increase since the deadly duo were placed on the throne.