Bad Pharma

[KmH]

Another drug maker scam that needs to be outlawed.

How 2 common drugs became a $455 million specialty pill

 

[snowbear]

My eye drops for surgery (the first eye) were listed for over $450. And I only use 28 drops of one and 14 drops of the other. I really feel for folks that don't have insurance to cover this stuff.

 

[KmH]

It's the insurers that most often get ripped off, and then charge more for their insurance.
While someone may have insurance included as part of their compensation at work, the extra cost to the employer for the insurance because of these ripoff pharma companies is money that could be used for other forms of compensation.

 

[Gary A.]

Interesting stuff.

 

[weepete]

You think that's bad check out what they did with epipens

Why the $600 EpiPen Costs $69 in Britain

I believe the price of others are even cheaper, around the $30 mark, and for a lot of people with severe alergies this is an essential potentially life saving bit of kit.

 

[smoke665]

In 2009 we were thrust into the world of specialty pharmaceuticals. That's when we learned how not only pharmaceutical manufacturer's but our own government and the insurance companies conspire against us. One of the maintenance drugs prescribed for my wife was $14000/month. She was on for 21 days off 7, so 21 pills each month. We found out that if we hadn't had insurance that it would have been cheaper for her to fly to Paris once a month, go to a doctor there for her prescription, pick it up and fly home. In an interview with the CEO of the company, when asked why they charged so much more for the drug in this country. His response was "because we can". This was for a drug that's been around since the 60's but reformulated for another use.

Now she's on another reformulation of a drug that she had been taking intravenously at a cost of just under $800/month. Instead of a once per month visit to the doctor she now takes 3 pills. The cost for that convenience? Only $10,000/Month! I've been afraid to research the cost of it in other countries for fear that my blood would boil.

I respect the fact that research costs money, and pharmaceutical companies are entitled to a profit on the expenditure. However I find it odd that the same drug sells for wildly differing prices across the world.

There's another "gottcha" going on in the country that is being fought by the insurance lobbyists, "drug parity laws". Cancer and other specialty drugs that are injected, don't have a co-pay, oral drugs do. When you're dealing with low dollar drugs a 5% co-pay isn't much, but when you're talking about these high priced drugs, even with insurance many people can't pay the co-pay. Just under half the states in the country have Parity laws already. There's a move on to nationalize it across the country, but the lobbyists have successfully blocked it for several years.