A well designed study of oral anticoagulants doesn't necessarily have to include warfarin in its study design.
There is probably a wealth of studies, many that have been extremely well peer reviewed, not to mention the studies that were run when Coumadin was submitted to the FDA for approval; plus probably decades of anecdotal follow-up reports regarding coumadin/warfarin as an anticoagulant, that there shouldn't be any need to do yet another set of studies of warfarin. Sure, testing is very expensive. Sure, the drug companies want studies that show that their drugs a) work, and b) are better than any alternative, but they're still stuck with the results of studies of alternative medications.
For my money, let these greedy companies convince the doctors that their high priced alternatives are better than warfarin for patients with aFib or other things that need anticoagulation (and still make it known that warfarin is a safer (?), less expensive, easily reversed alternative).
Drug companies want to get good returns on their investments on new medications - but this shouldn't be done to the exclusion of what's already out there. (Some of them are creating 'new' drugs by putting one or more generics into the same 'drug' and calling it 'new.' I don't want to name any specifically, but they're easy to find. One doctor gave me an inhaler that combined the ingredients of two OTC inhalers, and wanted $600 for something that would have cost about $20 or so over the counter).