SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
martyb
on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:34AM
from the staying-alive-is-getting-more-expensive dept.
from the staying-alive-is-getting-more-expensive dept.
EpiPen's price has ballooned about 400% since 2008, rising from about a $100 list price to $500 today. The EpiPen is one of the most important life-saving medical innovations for people with severe food allergies—which affect as many as 15 million Americans and 1 in 13 children in the United States. But its price has exploded over the last decade despite few upgrades to the product itself. The product's lack of competitors is likely a significant driver of the costs. [...] [The] EpiPen enjoys a near-monopoly on the market with annual sales of more than $1.3 billion and nearly 90% U.S. market share.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
EpiPen's Price Increased 400% since 2008
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 97 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.
-- Ayn Rand
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:36AM
Price in Switzerland, which is a high-cost country: $75. [compendium.ch] You can order them online from Canada for $112. [canadadrugs.com] If they cost $700 in the US, something is very wrong. Probably something called "Obamacare".
So buy a stock of the things abroad, and look into refrigeration. The rule of thumb is that each 10 degrees (celsius) of temperature reduction should double the life. Room temperature is 20C, so refrigeration just above freezing should quadruple the life. According to the online information, they are normally good for 17-24 months, so refrigeration should extend this to 6-8 years.
IANAMP (MP = medical professional), but a good pharmacist should be able to confirm whether or not there are any problems with refrigeration.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pe1rxq on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:00AM
The price hike started years before Obamacare. The fact that you blame it anyway is a good indicator why corporations get away with such greedy behavior.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:39AM
Aww, shoot. Here I was going to post that with so many more people that Obamacare is giving EpiPens to, it's only natural that the price go up!
(I mean, that's a natural consequence of scale, right? Bulk orders always cost per unit at least 150%–300% the cost of a single unit!)
Oh, oh, I know! I've got this one! It's to cover all the R&D! There. No mystery now! How could we continue to have EpiPens without billions of dollars of R&D per year/month/decade (pick a unit that makes the 109 figure reasonable) that those cheapskate RestOfTheWorlders are stealing from us without paying a fair price! We spend soooooo much on R&D! Everyone else are a bunch of rotten freeloaders!
You're welcome, Big Pharma. I'll take my fee in Bitcoin. Usual address.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:22PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @03:44PM
No true bitcoiner uses the same address twice!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:05PM
The price hike started years before Obamacare
In fact one of the stated goals of Obamacare was to reduce costs. Hmm that didnt work.
Here is why it did not work. Money.
The market will react to money. As you add in more money into a system inflation will occur. This happens because people are more willing to pay more. How did people afford to pay more? Tada... insurance. We made it wildly cheaper on the front end ('free' or 'only 50 dollar copay'). Then on the back end there was no cost controls (more competitors, laws, etc). So the cost naturally begins to match the real market value. That is the 'invisible hand'. If I give everyone in the world 1 billion dollars a loaf of bread is no longer worth a couple of bucks. It is worth a LOT more in monetary terms. Value wise it is the same. Same thing here. Less competitors, more money into the system = higher costs for the consumer.
Obamacare was nothing more than a giant mandated insurance scheme. So naturally with the new found cash the insurance companies went on a buying spree. The drug companies had to deal with less consumer competition (they sell to the insurance companies not you). So less competition there. The drug companies flush with more cash did inversions to reduce their tax loads and bought competitors out. So less competition there as well. Price *WILL* rise in an environment like that. Insurance rates are going up this year as well. By many estimates nearly 10-15 percent and deductibles are going from what used to be 50 or 10% pay to 5000 and 40% pay (I have seen as high as 70%).
The reality is Obamacare made things worse in many ways and better in a few. Mandated employer insurance (hillarycare) was one of the key points of why we are in this mess as is. My father sold medical insurance for years. Most 65+ year olds had insurance that was maybe 50-200 bucks a month (full coverage). Same insurance now is well over 1000 per month. The day they passed the PPO/MMO stuff my dad came home and said 'by the time you are 50 you will not be able to afford insurance'. It is looking like he was right. This insurance mess has been going on for a long time. Obamacare is just the latest iteration.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:24PM
Mandatory Insurance is not the problem.
1000 a month? I pay a little bit more per year and the healthcare system in my country is at least as good as that of the US (depending on who is making the list it might be better
Just because the US manages to fuck up does not make it a bad concept. There are enough counter examples.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:10PM
Just because the US manages to fuck up does not make it a bad concept. There are enough counter examples.
I totally agree. However, we were discussing Obmaacare which has been a clusterfuck from top to bottom.
For example my state requires you to buy car insurance to drive a car. I can chose from 20-30 different companies. At the Obamacare level? I have maybe 3-4 to chose from. I used to help my dad with the billing. For insurance companies they try to sell you it in this order. Group -> Life -> medical -> vision -> dental -> car. In that order from best profit to least. Group insurance is basically hillarycare (Health Security Act of 1993). Medical is basically Obamacare. Group was typically a perk companies would use to attract better workers. You could buy full medical coverage before 1992 for about 15-250 a month depending on conditions and age.
As you know other countries usually use a variation of single payer or managed care. To equate it to what we have is kinda silly. It is also typically just collected as a tax. Instead of causing millions of people to do even more paper work then the doctors have to basically play insurance chicken and hope you are covered.
I mention what I call lovingly 'insurance chicken'. They submit and see what happens. That is exactly how many doctors offices do it. Submit a 80 dollar cotton swab. If the insurance pays 'woot'. If not, oh well, bill the customer. If they dont pay it write it off or submit to collections and call it a deduction. Even though they were maybe a nickle out of pocket.
My mother was in the hospital last year. They gave her 4 Tylenol pills. The charge on that? 120 dollars. Oh it was out of my moms personal supply from her purse. They charged her to give her purse to her. They spent months arguing with the hospital about all sorts of things they charged that never happened. All of it submitted to insurance. Until my mom went thru each charge with the doctor line by line. They turned a 30k visit into a 300 dollar one. Why does the hospital do it? They GET AWAY WITH IT all the time. No one really cares 'insurance pays it'. Yet everyone bitches that particular items cost goes up. Well yeah because 'no one cares, insurance pays it'. I have lost count the number of nurses, doctors, and secretarys that have said those words 'who cares insurance pays it'. Then if you get 'cost conscious' on them they turn into 'not covered'.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:49AM
I'd be careful because a soul-less evil corporation could trivially add a viscosity thickener such that if its at fridge temperature the injection is slow as molasses. Hmm you can't breathe due to bee string and the injector is in slow motion, lets see how this turns out...
Whew luckily we strongly regulate and control our monopoly providers, you know, like firefighters and air traffic controllers and medical. Oh wait... well at least we know epi-pens are not monopoly provided by soul-less evil corporations... oh wait...
Of course where your strategy would work is if you get a bulk deal on qty ten for $6500, refrigerate 9, carry one, use one per year or whatever, etc.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:05PM
Price in New Zealand, about USD 87, and there's a good chance you can get the cost reimbursed by the government. Just over one tenth of the US price for the same product, if you have to pay for it at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:35PM
If I visit the USA, should I just fill my suitcase with those? That would pay for my trip tenfold! (Not that I will ever go to the US out of principle - I don't support fundamentally corrupt regimes).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:41PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by compro01 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:28PM
The JR means it's a child dose. I think adult is about double that or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:20PM
Fyi, they did make the importation of drugs illegal in the states.