Americans are spending over $300 billion a year on prescription drugs.

[the other mike]

There's virtually no drug insurance I know of where you pay RACK RATE for drugs until deductibles..

Sorry if I stepped on you story...

You never had a son who had to go through chemo and radiation like I have.
If I hadn't had BCBC at the time ( around 2007) we would have been bankrupt to the tune
of about 70 K.

 

[Crepitus]

A family member has a prescription for advair. At the local pharmacy it's about $500.00 a month.

You have no drug coverage? Because I was on Advair for 30 days and I paid less than $30...

If you DON'T have drug coverage -- go to GoodRX.com.. Really works. No applications.. Those folks have figured out what the REAL pricing is... What the pharmacy ASKS for without any group coverage -- virtually NOBODY ever has to pay.. The ASKING price is irrelevant..

I'll go look up the GoodRx price for Advair... Probably as good as my insurance discount was...

Folks like that are heroes.. They work FASTER, BETTER and more efficiently than ANYTHING the mental midgets in DC can do.....

Ya gotta read the whole post kid.

You're right that I didn't UNDERSTAND the "hitting the deductible part".. Because unless this drug insurance is some really shady deal, EVEN IF you don't hit the deductible, EVERYTHING is discounted thru the insurance arrangements and negotiations with distributors/pharmacy.. There's virtually no drug insurance I know of where you pay RACK RATE for drugs until deductibles..

Sorry if I stepped on you story...

Still there are MANY companies like GoodRx that get you very CLOSE to insurer discounts without taking risks buying on-line from Canada.... They are heroes... And more folks need to know about them.. I've just recently seen their cards being offered in Doctor's offices... And that evil Walmart GETS pretty close to "canadian pricing" without insurance...

The free market DOES repair it's flaws pretty quickly... At least at lightning speed if you compare it to "Swamp fixes"...

Sorry man, but that's the way it works here in Kansas. I don't know about "rack rate" but January and February's cost is nearly $500 each and then the insurance covers 80%. If there was a generic available it would be $4, $20, or $50 depending on some obscure formula they use and the deductible doesn't need to be met for it.

 

[flacaltenn]

There's virtually no drug insurance I know of where you pay RACK RATE for drugs until deductibles..

Sorry if I stepped on you story...

You never had a son who had to go through chemo and radiation like I have.
If I hadn't had BCBC at the time ( around 2007) we would have been bankrupt to the tune
of about 70 K.

Sure.. About a couple percentage of young children make up the vast majority of the medical expenses in that age demographic.. Costs are more significantly weighted towards FEWER patients in the young ages than any other group.. I have a grand niece with Cerebral Palsy.. We've chipped into many fundraisers for her kid..

But that's BEYOND the argument about mere pricing of drugs. The prices that get batted around by politicians and activists are not REAL.. They are a side effect of the way that insurance companies beat the pharma companies and distributors over costs. Every discount is figured as a percentage. Not as an absolute price. So as the negotiations on ANY drug proceed over the years, the "advertised list price" of that drug will go up.. But virtually NO ONE HAS to pay those rates. They either GET a negotiated discount thru an insurer, a group like GoodRx that registers as a "plan provider" but simply gives the discounts away, or a massive retailer like Walmart that has enough gravity to get almost the same deals as the insurers get and pass on MORE of that to the consumer..

Don't buy into folks shouting fantastic pricing examples until you've explored the "real world" pricing of that drug..