Another Big Pharma purchase downmarket

Abbott buys Piramal Healthcare's generic drugs unit for almost $4B, "the latest in a series of deals by Western drug makers to strengthen their presence in emerging markets including India."

This is good, but it also undercuts Big Pharma's arguments about how there's unsafe drugs in unsafe markets and safe drugs in safe markets and never the two shall meet.

I support this M&A activity because I believe the bottom-of-the-pyramid markets should inform Big Pharma as to how it should be able to deliver drugs a lot more cheaply back home.

And it damn well better do so, because those of us American who buy their prescription drugs via Canadian online drugstores know full well that there's no reason for us to be paying these prices when nobody else in the world--either developed or emerging--seems to.

Abbott's big interest in India is that it's mostly self-pay (70%), as opposed to government-controlled--as in Europe.  So Abbott hopes to balance the belt-tightening in the West with the expanding New Core middle class being willing--and able--to spend more on their healthcare.