When medication is too expensive to save you.

[Burgermeister]

Are we there yet? When a drug is proprietary, and you can charge whatever the hell you want for it, then yes, it's too expensive for you. Our hearts go out to your family.



Two weeks ago, I received a FedEx package containing my new prescription. It was ordered from a university hospital pharmacy 70 miles away, because these are pills that a corner drugstore cannot dispense. The price tag = $17,172.

Let that number sink in for a moment. A one month's supply of this drug surpasses the price of most used cars, a semester of college or a year's rent on an apartment. Did I pay that much? Well, of course not. It was covered under my Medicare insurance.. or the company that carries my Medicare advantage HMO plan. Honestly, I don't know even how that works anymore or who pays for what.

Getting their approval for this drug took almost 6 weeks. I’m sure there’s a secret motive behind that delay. They’re probably hoping some patients will croak before they have to fork over for the prescription. Even though I did not pay for it, somebody did. Taxpayers paid for it. You paid for it.

As outrageous as a $613 dose of medicine sounds, it’s far from being the most expensive medication on the market. There are next-generation injectables, gene therapy and IV infusions that make $17K seem like a pittance. The most expensive medication is a cancer drug that costs about $1 million per year. But these are tablets-- a mere pill.

Never one to underestimate the unrestrained greed of the pharmaceutical companies, I wanted to know if this prescription was significantly cheaper in Canada or in Mexico. Americans can often find out just how bad we’re getting reamed by Big Pharma by checking international drug prices. Surprisingly, I learned that in Canada, a one month course of this medicine is about the same: $22,000C ($16K USD). The total in Mexico is also comparable to the US price, but the drug isn’t a commonly available south of the border. So it seems the drug maker has a global monopoly and can charge whatever they please. And it obviously pleases them to price gouge patients to the maximum allowable extent.

How can they possibly justify this? Well, there are two glaring motives. One is the drug may be a proprietary original and the price reflects all the expensive research that went into making it. It’s one of only a handful of medications which effectively treat hepatitis C, so they’ve effectively cornered the market. Secondly, patients only need these drugs for 2-3 months. After a patient takes the 60 to 90 day course of these pills, they’re cured. They don’t need the pills anymore. Which means the pharmaceutical company is out make as much money as possible off patients in that short span of time. I imagine in a secluded, Big Pharma conference room somewhere, a group of accountants hashed out the value of a hep C cure versus the medical costs & suffering that patient would endure over the next year if left untreated. And the figure they came up with was approximately $35,000.

Numbers like that leave me wondering about more than the high cost of healthcare. It makes me wonder about the value of a human life. This fact evoked memories of all the times I’ve had to have pets euthanized, because I couldn’t afford their veterinary treatment. And it makes me wonder if we've reached the same point with human beings.

Hope it clears up for you.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

My doctor prescribed a skin cream that cost $300. For a tiny tube. I called the company. They gave me a code number to give to the pharmacist. The cream only cost $50.00

 

[initforme]

Big pharma like big oil just does whatever they feel lol me. Not hard to see.

 

[Polishprince]

My doctor prescribed a skin cream that cost $300. For a tiny tube. I called the company. They gave me a code number to give to the pharmacist. The cream only cost $50.00

The sticker price of medicine isn't always the price that the pharmaceutical companies are willing to take.

Remember that they don't mae anything if you say "no thanks".

Pfizer et al realizes that they are always alternatives- they might not be as ideal as their flagship product but are still safe and somewhat effective.

If you didn't but this skin cream, you might have bought generic vaseline for a few bucks instead.