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Pharmacutical Companies can kiss my white, hairy...

Trekker4747

Trekker4747

Boldly going...
Premium Member
ASS!

New prescription the doctor put me on. Cost of a refill? $75!

"But, Trekker," you say "don't you have insurance?"

Yes. That's the co-pay WITH insurance! Without insurance the pills cost almost $800.

I'm surprised such tiny little pills cost so much without being made out of platinum or Grade-A crack. Speaking of which, I wonder if my $80 would have been better spent if I just went downtown, bought a couple pounds of marijuana, got a blow-job from a hooker and then used what was left over to treat myself to dinner at the city's top-rated steak house?
 
If you don't mind losing privacy, what's the med? Are there any alternatives on your insurance formulary? Ask your pharmacist (or I can ask Hubby, a pharmacist). Or can your doctor get a pre-auhtorization okay from your insurance company?

I have the same problem with statins. Evidently, I'm sensitive. I got increasingly uncomfortable at night, aching from feet to hips. My doctor gave me something from Japan, samples for about 4 months, while trying to get pre-authorization. About $80/month ON insurance--that's as much as all my other meds combined!
 
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They're probably new.

My future brother-in-law has a continuous blood sugar monitor connected to him which is connected to a wireless device that allows real time knowledge of his blood sugars, tis a brilliant bit of kit, but because it's pretty new, it's also very expensive and not on the NHS.
 
Research and development costs money. It's a pain in the ass, but the cost of those things don't just evaporate. People who do the work have to be paid. Not everything can be amortized against future earnings.

It sucks that stuff costs so much, but what is the alternative? Not develop new drugs to combat or cure diseases, or just let people die like in the "olden days"?

Government subsidies can help, but think about it. Where does that money come from? You and me, that's where. And in collecting and distributing that money, a ton of it is eaten up in administrative costs. A TON. The end result is that not a lot of the money goes where it was intended to go in the first place.

Independent hospitals and charities go a long way to putting money where it will best be used. It doesn't make me happy to say it, but ACA won't make things any better. We're starting to see the effects of that, and it hasn't even been fully implemented yet.

A lot of people will disagree, but I don't have time or energy to argue about this kind of stuff in a place where it ultimately won't make any difference.
 
^Well even with countries with Univseral Health cover you still end up paying for it via higher taxes. And not every new drug is approved due to the cost. Depending on a varitey of factors you might have to make a contribution towards the cost. in the UK for example this is ~£8(US$12)
 
Trekker4747 said:
ASS!

New prescription the doctor put me on. Cost of a refill? $75!

"But, Trekker," you say "don't you have insurance?"

Yes. That's the co-pay WITH insurance! Without insurance the pills cost almost $800.

I'm surprised such tiny little pills cost so much without being made out of platinum or Grade-A crack. Speaking of which, I wonder if my $80 would have been better spent if I just went downtown, bought a couple pounds of marijuana, got a blow-job from a hooker and then used what was left over to treat myself to dinner at the city's top-rated steak house?
Click to expand...

I went without two $300 medications (I have no insurance) for many months. There's not much to be done about it, really. When I had insurance, my medications were around $75 a month, for all of them combined. There's research costs to be recovered, and money to be made. That's the nature of the business, here. I don't like it, but that's the way it is. When you're the low man on the totem pole, and lots of people standing on your head, there's not much you can do.
 
There are drug companies in the US that will absorb some of the cost of medications if you can't afford it. It's worth looking into.

The main thing to remember is that the bigger the bureaucracy you build to manage and regulate a thing, the heavier the cost of that bureaucracy becomes. There are a few things that government does very well, but most things government just FUBARs.
 
What we really need is a single payer healthcare system. While no system is perfect, ours seems to be particularly bad if you don't have a constant influx of cash. Even those who are middle to upper middle class encounter problems, where a single surgery can bring on ruinous debt.
 
I had a medicine I was on last year that was 240 dollars! That was with insurance....
ETA: If I'd gotten the pills, it wouldn't have cost so much, but the Carafate suspension took effect much, much quicker. So that's why my gastroenterologist prescribed it.
 
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I'm not sure what to call the drug but it's a supplement to an anti-depressant to further help stabilize mood and lower anxiety.

I get companies need to recoup costs on R&D and such but $80 (or $800) for 30 tiny little pills strikes me as too much. It's them milking people who are sick and need medication for money, they want their payday now, now, NOW! And if one has to spend a week's salary to get this medication then so be it!

Sorry, don't buy into it. Especially since this medication is available for much, much less in Canada.
 
Hence the "and money to be made" part of my earlier statement. Once costs are covered, there's a shitload of money to make off the drug, and it will likely be re-purposed several times (see: Cymbalta) before every cent has been wrung from it.
 
The whole "R&D cost" thing is complete bullshit, made up by the drug companies to justify their outrageous prices and marketing tactics.

Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote a scathing book called The Truth About the Drug Companies.

"But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind “mining, crude oil production,” and “commercial banks.”) The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc...th-about-the-drug-companies/?pagination=false

She documents the business practices and questionable science with great precision and citation.

Big Pharma can, indeed, kiss my white, hairy ass too.
 
I don't know if it's relevant, but the prescription for Prevacid is $160/30 caps before copay, but the OTC for the same exact thing (name brand) is around $25/30 caps.

Now, Trekker's script may be a new drug, but that shit is wildly overinflated price-wise no matter how they justify it.
 
Agreed, I don't buy into the "R&D" cost thing. The full price for this medication is almost $800 for a one-month supply. That's complete and utter bullshit.
 
1001001 said:
The whole "R&D cost" thing is complete bullshit, made up by the drug companies to justify their outrageous prices and marketing tactics.

Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote a scathing book called The Truth About the Drug Companies.

"But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind “mining, crude oil production,” and “commercial banks.”) The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc...th-about-the-drug-companies/?pagination=false

She documents the business practices and questionable science with great precision and citation.

Big Pharma can, indeed, kiss my white, hairy ass too.
Click to expand...

That is obscene (not your ass, the Pharma stuff)!
 
Peach Wookiee said:
I had a medicine I was on last year that was 240 dollars! That was with insurance....
ETA: If I'd gotten the pills, it wouldn't have cost so much, but the Carafate suspension took effect much, much quicker. So that's why my gastroenterologist prescribed it.
Click to expand...

Carafate?!

I was give those pills twice for extreme heartburn 20 years ago. Both times had the same (previously unknown) side effect: it turned my shit green. As in green as a new leaf in spring. I hadn't had grape juice or anything that would do that, and it only happened the two periods I took that med. I laugh now, but it scared me, well not shitless, but it scared me.

I asked Hubby, since he's a pharmacist, I figured he'd know something. He said pharma companies work on, say 100 meds and only 2 or 3 go through. So they ARE recouping for all those no-gos...but that they recoup that in a year or so. So they're squeezing everyone for money.
 
Green poo? Wow. That did not happen to me. But that Carafate suspension was wonderful. My stomach stopped burning.
 
Yeah! These companies are pure evil. How dare they demand to make a profit from the services they provide?! We should make that illegal. Completely unethical to demand compensation for a service provided. Oh wait... then they'll all go out of business and where will you get your product then? Oops.
 
R. Star said:
Yeah! These companies are pure evil. How dare they demand to make a profit from the services they provide?! We should make that illegal. Completely unethical to demand compensation for a service provided. Oh wait... then they'll all go out of business and where will you get your product then? Oops.
Click to expand...

$800 (the cost of this prescription without insurance) for 30 tiny little pills isn't profit for services provided. It's profits plus a trip to the Cayman islands.
 
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