Pharmaceuticals are nice to have and can be lifesavers (when you can afford them) but too much emphasis is placed on “silver bullet” meds and treatments and not enough on prevention.
The average American has an unhealthy lifestyle on multiple levels and then when their years of living irresponsibly (just one example: vaping! So much better than cigarettes! Just gonna take a little longer to shorten your lifespan kiddos, but enjoy the strawberry cotton candy nic hit while you can) finally catch up with them now it’s time for a heroic magic pill intervention to fix their condition.
Obviously many people have health issues through no fault of their own but the self-caused harm component of health care costs needs to be better addressed by preventing or reducing it in the first place before it swamps the system.
Ta, Robyn. This post is perfect. I'd like to add just one small thing. Almost all new drug "discoveries" are funded by us, the taxpayers. That pharmaceutical companies see us only as customers to be gouged will always be an outrage (until it ends).
As a sufferer of Type II diabetes I applaud the government capping the price at $35 a month but suddenly diabetic medicines are in short supply. Is this retaliation for the price cap?
Mrs 🦡🍄🐍 has been on the “flab jabs” (Ozempic) for a couple months now, and it has changed her life. But she buys it through a compounding pharmacy, which charges “only” half the street price. Which implies they are STILL making money hand-over-fucking-fist. Pardon me while a punch this wall.
I get my Emgality for free because I get it through Inova Pharmacy Delivery. Less convenient than CVS, sure (they need 4 hour delivery windows usually), but also not $60 a month because they get a coupon from Lilly to fill it directly like that.
If I didn't have insurance that covered it? Just over $800 a month, with GoodRX maybe able to get it down by $150 or so. No thank you. Can't find how much it costs to make because it's so new there are zero biosimilars to it.
I hate to do this and cannot read the linked article on COGM due to it being blocked, but how much it takes to manufacture a drug doesn't necessarily reflect how much it costs to bring it to market, etc. It is - to some extent - true that just taking just that into account isn't fair for a drug developer/manufacturer. There ARE a lot of other built-in costs other than how much a dose of a drug costs to manufacture once it has been developed and approved.
BUT ... I really wish that drug companies could not advertise in the US - it wastes SO MUCH MONEY that could otherwise benefit patients by reducing costs overall for pharma companies. Drugs are registered in most markets and are cost-controlled at some level in those with single-buyer systems. It's not like those countries are skipped over because they will make less money for the company (though I work on medicines that are more "you're taking it to not immediately die from a disease RIGHT NOW" (think cancer)).
There are a lot of improvements to be made in drug costs, but I HATE when I see "it only takes $X.XX to manufacture this", because while pharma doesn't invest as much as it should in development, that number really doesn't acknowledge the years of people working on it before it's available for commercial use.
My husband has type 2 diabetes, Ozempic has worked wonders for him. There have been some times when our pharmacy can't get it. I blame it on the people who are getting their drs to write scrips for it when they don't need to lose weight at all. My boss' daughter is obese and truly has tried everything, I thing she should be a candidate for a non-diabetic scrip for it.
i live in fear of needing one of the drugs i see advertised on TV, as economic ruin must surely follow … those ads cost beaucoup bucks & they run all the time on primetime TV … this was inevitable ever since we allowed insurance companies to control the healthcare marketplace … pay up or die ! … & don’t get me started on all those people dancing (poorly) in the ads themselves, too depressing for words …
Get this: I use immodium/loperamide and just went to buy some more. 35.00 for 200 2mg caplets. I have seen the price go up steadily, but this is a big jump. There is no excuse. It is simply price gouging. 1000 caplets/tablets are available from an Indian pharmacy for the same price. Tell me they aren't the same medication.
I read where the proposed advertising and media blitz surrounding an Alzheimer's drug a couple if years ago was 2.5 times the development cost. For a drug that at best showed only a very modest effect of slowing progression of the disease. While having serious potential side effects like bleeding in the brain. At a cost of over $50,000 a year per patient. Eating up money that could be better spent on other health care. As someone in my 70s now and with a parent who had Alzheimer's, I am aware of the harm it does. But if a drug is given to millions of people at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year with only a few of them showing a very slight improvement in progression is that a better expenditure of limited health care funds than cancer research, cardiac rehab, or better control of diabetes.
It seems like in the best case you are simply betting a person's body wears out before their mind does, but most people see no benefit. Plus it could bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid, or jack up Medicare premiums for people on limited incomes on Medicare (yes, you do have premiums for Medicare if you are on part B or the drug or supplemental medical coverage most people have).
Hi, Wegovy user here. I specifically chose Wegovy because it wasn't classified as a diabetic drug so as to not contribute to the long wait times and scarcity for people with diabetes like my parents. This is the first medication I'm glad to have insurance for; out of pocket it's $1,250 but with insurance it's $25.
"But we need to charge high prices to fund research on new and improved drugs!"
"Oh, the ones where you tweak the formula or manufacturing process *just enough* to let you take out a new patent, and don't actually make anything significantly better?"
Like many other issues on corporate profits and how they use it, tax excessive profits due to price gouging. Or with stock buy backs a flat 50% income tax on buy backs. Pharmaceutical companies do need money to do research on drugs, often with research on a particular drug not being effective or cause more health issues than it solves. Especially for a drug with a limited market that may benefit just 20,000 people. But when the market for a drug is huge a 2,000% mark up is ridiculous. Especially since we sometimes find the basic research is funded by government grants. Equally as ridiculous is jacking up prices for drugs long off patents but produced by only a very few companies. You don't need active collusion when just three companies control 80% of the market.
Or in the case of Martin Shkreli, aka Pharma bro, who bought an orphan drug with a limited but essential market that every other company had discontinued and jacked the price up 1,500%. It would take a lot of money for any company to resume production at which time Shkreli could drop the price and undercut them. So it's too risky, costly, and time consuming for anyone to compete. In fact, the government should buy out some of these essential orphan drug companies to make sure gouging doesn't happen.
Then of course we have Joe Manchin's daughter who controlled a major naloxone injectable to reverse opioid overdoses and tripled the price when it became the standard part of any first aid kit. So there are lots of avenues of pricing abuse in pharmaceuticals but faced with millions of dollars from drug company lobbying and campaign bribes no political will to do anything. Until Biden stepped in and Bernie kept up pressure.
I actually wrote to the skyrizi people and told them that every time I detected one of their ads I dive for the remotes mute button as quickly as possible and it was scaring our cats.
They thanked me for sharing my views on their product.
Yes-i am one of THOSE people that bother to tell them when their ads cause distress.
Pharmaceuticals are nice to have and can be lifesavers (when you can afford them) but too much emphasis is placed on “silver bullet” meds and treatments and not enough on prevention.
The average American has an unhealthy lifestyle on multiple levels and then when their years of living irresponsibly (just one example: vaping! So much better than cigarettes! Just gonna take a little longer to shorten your lifespan kiddos, but enjoy the strawberry cotton candy nic hit while you can) finally catch up with them now it’s time for a heroic magic pill intervention to fix their condition.
Obviously many people have health issues through no fault of their own but the self-caused harm component of health care costs needs to be better addressed by preventing or reducing it in the first place before it swamps the system.
Ta, Robyn. This post is perfect. I'd like to add just one small thing. Almost all new drug "discoveries" are funded by us, the taxpayers. That pharmaceutical companies see us only as customers to be gouged will always be an outrage (until it ends).
As a sufferer of Type II diabetes I applaud the government capping the price at $35 a month but suddenly diabetic medicines are in short supply. Is this retaliation for the price cap?
Mrs 🦡🍄🐍 has been on the “flab jabs” (Ozempic) for a couple months now, and it has changed her life. But she buys it through a compounding pharmacy, which charges “only” half the street price. Which implies they are STILL making money hand-over-fucking-fist. Pardon me while a punch this wall.
Fuck Bernie, if he hadn’t a sandbagged Hilary we’d be much further along.
I get my Emgality for free because I get it through Inova Pharmacy Delivery. Less convenient than CVS, sure (they need 4 hour delivery windows usually), but also not $60 a month because they get a coupon from Lilly to fill it directly like that.
If I didn't have insurance that covered it? Just over $800 a month, with GoodRX maybe able to get it down by $150 or so. No thank you. Can't find how much it costs to make because it's so new there are zero biosimilars to it.
I hate to do this and cannot read the linked article on COGM due to it being blocked, but how much it takes to manufacture a drug doesn't necessarily reflect how much it costs to bring it to market, etc. It is - to some extent - true that just taking just that into account isn't fair for a drug developer/manufacturer. There ARE a lot of other built-in costs other than how much a dose of a drug costs to manufacture once it has been developed and approved.
BUT ... I really wish that drug companies could not advertise in the US - it wastes SO MUCH MONEY that could otherwise benefit patients by reducing costs overall for pharma companies. Drugs are registered in most markets and are cost-controlled at some level in those with single-buyer systems. It's not like those countries are skipped over because they will make less money for the company (though I work on medicines that are more "you're taking it to not immediately die from a disease RIGHT NOW" (think cancer)).
There are a lot of improvements to be made in drug costs, but I HATE when I see "it only takes $X.XX to manufacture this", because while pharma doesn't invest as much as it should in development, that number really doesn't acknowledge the years of people working on it before it's available for commercial use.
My husband has type 2 diabetes, Ozempic has worked wonders for him. There have been some times when our pharmacy can't get it. I blame it on the people who are getting their drs to write scrips for it when they don't need to lose weight at all. My boss' daughter is obese and truly has tried everything, I thing she should be a candidate for a non-diabetic scrip for it.
i live in fear of needing one of the drugs i see advertised on TV, as economic ruin must surely follow … those ads cost beaucoup bucks & they run all the time on primetime TV … this was inevitable ever since we allowed insurance companies to control the healthcare marketplace … pay up or die ! … & don’t get me started on all those people dancing (poorly) in the ads themselves, too depressing for words …
Get this: I use immodium/loperamide and just went to buy some more. 35.00 for 200 2mg caplets. I have seen the price go up steadily, but this is a big jump. There is no excuse. It is simply price gouging. 1000 caplets/tablets are available from an Indian pharmacy for the same price. Tell me they aren't the same medication.
I read where the proposed advertising and media blitz surrounding an Alzheimer's drug a couple if years ago was 2.5 times the development cost. For a drug that at best showed only a very modest effect of slowing progression of the disease. While having serious potential side effects like bleeding in the brain. At a cost of over $50,000 a year per patient. Eating up money that could be better spent on other health care. As someone in my 70s now and with a parent who had Alzheimer's, I am aware of the harm it does. But if a drug is given to millions of people at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year with only a few of them showing a very slight improvement in progression is that a better expenditure of limited health care funds than cancer research, cardiac rehab, or better control of diabetes.
It seems like in the best case you are simply betting a person's body wears out before their mind does, but most people see no benefit. Plus it could bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid, or jack up Medicare premiums for people on limited incomes on Medicare (yes, you do have premiums for Medicare if you are on part B or the drug or supplemental medical coverage most people have).
Hi, Wegovy user here. I specifically chose Wegovy because it wasn't classified as a diabetic drug so as to not contribute to the long wait times and scarcity for people with diabetes like my parents. This is the first medication I'm glad to have insurance for; out of pocket it's $1,250 but with insurance it's $25.
Also, down 75 pounds in a year. :)
"But we need to charge high prices to fund research on new and improved drugs!"
"Oh, the ones where you tweak the formula or manufacturing process *just enough* to let you take out a new patent, and don't actually make anything significantly better?"
Where is 'pharma bro' when we need him?
Like many other issues on corporate profits and how they use it, tax excessive profits due to price gouging. Or with stock buy backs a flat 50% income tax on buy backs. Pharmaceutical companies do need money to do research on drugs, often with research on a particular drug not being effective or cause more health issues than it solves. Especially for a drug with a limited market that may benefit just 20,000 people. But when the market for a drug is huge a 2,000% mark up is ridiculous. Especially since we sometimes find the basic research is funded by government grants. Equally as ridiculous is jacking up prices for drugs long off patents but produced by only a very few companies. You don't need active collusion when just three companies control 80% of the market.
Or in the case of Martin Shkreli, aka Pharma bro, who bought an orphan drug with a limited but essential market that every other company had discontinued and jacked the price up 1,500%. It would take a lot of money for any company to resume production at which time Shkreli could drop the price and undercut them. So it's too risky, costly, and time consuming for anyone to compete. In fact, the government should buy out some of these essential orphan drug companies to make sure gouging doesn't happen.
Then of course we have Joe Manchin's daughter who controlled a major naloxone injectable to reverse opioid overdoses and tripled the price when it became the standard part of any first aid kit. So there are lots of avenues of pricing abuse in pharmaceuticals but faced with millions of dollars from drug company lobbying and campaign bribes no political will to do anything. Until Biden stepped in and Bernie kept up pressure.
But it costs a billion dollars to advertise.
Those insipid earworms do not write themselves.
I actually wrote to the skyrizi people and told them that every time I detected one of their ads I dive for the remotes mute button as quickly as possible and it was scaring our cats.
They thanked me for sharing my views on their product.
Yes-i am one of THOSE people that bother to tell them when their ads cause distress.