Prescription drug pricing insanity

[Bill Dufour]

I take januvia which my insurance does not cover. Cvs is about $10 A PILL. I found a online place for $140 delivered for 84 pills. They are made in Trukey, shipped from Switzerland, and somehow a pharmacy in Mauritius is the listed seller. About two weeks lead time and you have to fax/email a prescription.
I could pay $1000 a month more for the silver insurance which would cover my meds with co-pays but it would drop hospitalization from 100% TO 70% coverage. ALL MY OTHER MEDS COST LESS THEN THe COPAY WOULD BE.
I used to get them from India but there was a lawsuit and India no longer makes them as a slightly different chemical. I think it was like sodium salt vs carbonate salt of the active ingredient.

[Brian Deakin]

The cost price to the National health service in the United Kingdom for
84 Rosuvastatin 20mg is $9
This would equate to a retail price private prescription charge of $13.50

[Mike Henderson]

Thanks for the pointer to GoodRx.com I had not known about that. Could be valuable for me.

Mike

[Jay Jolliffe]

Two years ago I took a prescription for 12 weeks & the cost was 96,000....No shopping for cheaper & I'm glad it was covered by insurance after a short fight by the hospital...

[Steve Eure]

Ought to be against the law for some of these pricing differences. I once had a prescription with a co-pay of $35. Walgreen's charged me the $35. Found out later that the drug only cost $8 without using insurance. I asked the pharmacist why? He said they had to charge what the insurance companies said to charge if I used my insurance. You would think the insurance company would have been happier paying the $8 outright instead of me being charged the $35. No telling what the pharmacy charged the insurance company.
Just doesn't make good business sense to me.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Ought to be against the law for some of these pricing differences. I once had a prescription with a co-pay of $35. Walgreen's charged me the $35. Found out later that the drug only cost $8 without using insurance. I asked the pharmacist why? He said they had to charge what the insurance companies said to charge if I used my insurance. You would think the insurance company would have been happier paying the $8 outright instead of me being charged the $35. No telling what the pharmacy charged the insurance company.
Just doesn't make good business sense to me.

Makes perfect business sense to insurance company. With insurance, $35 for an $8 drug, insurance company gets $27 every time prescription if filled. Sounds like you had a Blue Cross / Blue Shield plan.

[John Goodin]

I think we all know healthcare is the similar. Several years ago I had an accident and spent a night in the hospital and was billed 112,000 dollars. Insurance settled for just under 50 grand. The part that irked my the most was the scans. A doctor that never saw me ordered an extra set of scans of my torso. They took an extra five minutes and billed 14,000 dollars.

[Ken Combs]

I take januvia which my insurance does not cover. Cvs is about $10 A PILL. I found a online place for $140 delivered for 84 pills. They are made in Trukey, shipped from Switzerland, and somehow a pharmacy in Mauritius is the listed seller. About two weeks lead time and you have to fax/email a prescription.
I could pay $1000 a month more for the silver insurance which would cover my meds with co-pays but it would drop hospitalization from 100% TO 70% coverage. ALL MY OTHER MEDS COST LESS THEN THe COPAY WOULD BE.
I used to get them from India but there was a lawsuit and India no longer makes them as a slightly different chemical. I think it was like sodium salt vs carbonate salt of the active ingredient.

I take a med that is filled and shipped through that exact path. Strange to see a Swiss postmark on a Turkish prescription filled on a French island in the middle of nowhere. BTW, that island is where the first piece of flight 370 washed up.
I

[Wade Lippman]

I take januvia which my insurance does not cover. Cvs is about $10 A PILL. I found a online place for $140 delivered for 84 pills. They are made in Trukey, shipped from Switzerland, and somehow a pharmacy in Mauritius is the listed seller. About two weeks lead time and you have to fax/email a prescription.
I could pay $1000 a month more for the silver insurance which would cover my meds with co-pays but it would drop hospitalization from 100% TO 70% coverage. ALL MY OTHER MEDS COST LESS THEN THe COPAY WOULD BE.
I used to get them from India but there was a lawsuit and India no longer makes them as a slightly different chemical. I think it was like sodium salt vs carbonate salt of the active ingredient.

You gotta do what you gotta do, but I would be terrified to take anything that went that route.

Years ago my son got pneumonia from contaminated medicine. The FDA forbid a certain manufacturing process because it was too easily contaminated. The producer did it anyways because it was cheaper. They were fined, but no one went to jail despite 4 people dying. If that happens here under FDA supervision; what happens in Turkey? (or wherever it really is made...)

[John Cole]

I think you would be shocked to find out that most medicines in the US supply system are manufactured outside of the country, India and China.

[Alan Rutherford]

You gotta do what you gotta do, but I would be terrified to take anything that went that route....

How much choice do you have? Look at all the ....sartan heart medicine recalls recently and try to find an alternative that sounds much better. Just out of curiosity I looked into the company that makes a drug my wife was switched to (third or fourth switch in about two months) and eventually found that despite their US address and office, they're a wholly-owned subsidiary of a company in India. Still don't know where they make that particular medicine.

Our system is broken. We pay several times as much for health care as any other country and get less for it.

[Brian Henderson]

Our system is broken. We pay several times as much for health care as any other country and get less for it.

That's because a lot of other countries place artificial caps on drug costs and drug development costs billions. That money has to come from somewhere.

[Edwin Santos]

It's an unpleasant fact that the health care industry in the United States is a multi-trillion dollar locomotive where the patient/end-user is the caboose.

Edwin

[Alan Rutherford]

That's because a lot of other countries place artificial caps on drug costs and drug development costs billions. That money has to come from somewhere.

Are you saying we're covering the money drug companies lose selling in other countries? Not likely. Those companies are not in business to cover their costs. Their goal is to make money for their shareholders. They are entitled to do that. In fact if you have drug company stock in a mutual fund, you want them to do that but it's gotten out of hand.

See episode 3 ("Drug Short") of the Netflix series "Dirty Money" or Google Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

Drug prices are not the only way our sytem is broken. We're 11th out of 11 countries in one organization's ranking of overall health care. According to the World Health Organization's 2018 report, maternal mortality in the US is 14 deaths per 100,000 births. In 33 European countries it's between 3 and 11. 12 in Kazakhstan, 16 in Turkey. IIRC, we're paying 3 to 4 times as much for our heath care as anyone else.

There are many dedicated, hard-working, honest people in the health care system. It's not their fault. I still say it's broken.

It's an unpleasant fact that the health care industry in the United States is a multi-trillion dollar locomotive where the patient/end-user is the caboose. Edwin

[Wade Lippman]

Drug prices are not the only way our sytem is broken. We're 11th out of 11 countries in one organization's ranking of overall health care. According to the World Health Organization's 2018 report, maternal mortality in the US is 14 deaths per 100,000 births. In 33 European countries it's between 3 and 11. 12 in Kazakhstan, 16 in Turkey. IIRC, we're paying 3 to 4 times as much for our heath care as anyone else.

I expect we have many more drug addicted mothers than Kazakhstan. That radically increases both the maternal mortality and the cost of health care; but isn't really a medical problem.

Not that I know anything about drug use in Kazakhstan... just making a reasonable assumption.