Actual Costs of Manufacturing Pharmaceutical Drugs

From JUDICIAL REFORM INVESTIGATIONS / justice@court.to

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the Active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.

In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America. The chart below speaks for itself.

BRAND NAME	CONSUMER PRICE 100	COST OF GENERAL ACTIVE INGREDIENTS per 100 tab/cap	PERCENT MARKUP
Celebrex 100 mg Claritin 10 mg Keflex 250 mg Lipitor 20 mg Norvasc 10 mg Paxil 20 mg Prevacid 30 mg Prilosec 20 mg Prozac 20 mg Tenormin 50 mg Vasotec 10 mg Xanax 1mg Zestril 20 mg Zithromax 600mg Zocor 40mg Zoloft 50mg	$130.27 $215.17 $157.39 $272.37 $188.29 $220.27 $44.77 $360.97 $247.47 $104.47 $102.37 $136.79 $89.89 $1,482.19 $350.27 $206.87	$0.60 $0.71 $1.88 $5.80 $0.14 $7.60 $1.01 $0.52 $0.11 $0.13 $0.20 $0.024 $3.20 $18.78 $8.63 $1.75	21,712% 30,306% 8,372% 4,696% 134,493% 2,898% 34,136% 69,417% 224,973% 80,362% 51,185% 569,958% 2,809% 7,892% 4,059% 11,821%