Spring starts and everyone rushes outside. Spring! Yay! It’s sunny and flowers are blooming. But then there are the people like me who tunnel indoors with allergies. I hide in my room with pills and sprays and eye drops. I’m not alone either. According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, 50 million Americans suffer from some form of allergies. I am lucky enough to have health insurance, but there are millions that don’t.

All of my drugs combined cost about $60 after insurance. But without insurance, it would be prohibitively expensive. A thirty day supply of Allegra-D is $124.92. One bottle of my nasal spray, enough for 60 days, is $105.26. One bottle of eye drops, also good for 60 days, is $99.32. The allergy season for me only lasts about 60 days, so if I didn’t have insurance it would cost $454.42.

And I imagine that it would be a lot worse if I had a problem that was less common or required more drugs. AIDS pills, for example, can cost $30,000 a year! So it occurs to me now that I intended this post, as the title suggests, to be about drug companies. Don’t worry; I’m still sticking to my plan.

So here’s the part that bugs me about the $30,000 AIDS treatment or the $450 allergy meds. It’s the companies themselves! The CEO of Aventis, the maker of Allegra-D made $3.3 million in the 2006 fiscal year. The CEO of Astra-Zeneca made $4 million in the 2007 fiscal year. Their companies are obviously not hurting for cash, so what the heck is going on? Why can’t they provide cheaper treatment for people? Ultimately, people don’t care about allergy medication, but couldn’t they lower the prices on AIDS drugs?

Theoretically, they could. Everyone looks at drug companies as the perfect example of corporate greed and taking advantage of people in need. These companies are in a tough position. They are corporations, not charities, so they need to look after their corporate interest. They need to make a profit and the bigger the better. But they are also dealing with an area where people need these drugs. They can raise prices 300% and people would still buy them because they need them. And they can’t be completely heartless because somebody is bound to get mad. They have to try to reach a middle grounds, but a lot of people feel that they’re still not doing a good job.

It’s worth pointing out, that $4 million is not an outrageous amount in the corporate world. Steve Jobs made $646 million last year. And it’s also worth point out that the pills are expensive to make. 100 tablets of Claritin costs $215, but the ingredients cost only $71. That seems to contradict my last sentence. However, one tablet of Claritin does not cost $0.71. That’s only the manufacturing cost. Pill 1 takes years of research and development. It’s conceivable that a company spend 10 years on one drug and then bag it because it fails in clinical trials. Here’s one fact: A new prescription drug (Claritin is sold in both over-the-counter and prescription doses) costs an average of $897 million to research and develop, according to Tufts University. And only 21.5% of drugs that make it to phase I clinical trials are approved. The $4 million salary isn’t looking so big anymore.

And when companies start taking a look at their annual earnings, they start thinking $4 million isn’t that big either. There have been incidences of falsified clinical trials and improper communication with the FDA. After years of working on a drug, companies are not inclined to eat their losses, so we wind up with cases like this.

I mentioned providing HIV drugs to Africa earlier in this post. That’s a whole different issue for a different post, but I do know that there are difficulties for drug companies and patients. They can’t act like a charity because they have a board of directors, not a board of trustees. The companies have the drugs and the patients need the drugs. There are other matters that complicate it even further. Although this is changing, HIV drugs must be taken at specific times or they become ineffective and drug resistant strains begin to emerge. Without a proper medical infrastructure, it’s impossible to make sure that people are correctly administering their drugs.

Of course, I’m not advocating that we stop helping people in Africa. There’s certainly hope. Most recently, Gilead Sciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb came to an agreement to provide a one pill a day HIV treatment that should go a long way to aiding medical efforts. For a while, companies had been combining only drugs that they owned, so people were taking only 3-5 pills a day. Not too bad in the modern world, but potentially an issue in Africa. This cross-company agreement will help when the pill ships.

So my point is this: Give the drug companies a break. The health system is a big problem, but I don’t think that pharmaceutical companies are the ones the ones creating the problem. They are certainly interested in making a profit, but they do have huge costs and undertake enormous risks. I also hope that they will not try to interfere with the FDA from now on. Trying to find a balance between providing low-cost drugs and delivering to shareholders is difficult, but drug companies do a pretty good job.

If you were patient enough to read the whole thing, please comment!