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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:34AM   Printer-friendly
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.

At Fortune, NYT, The Hill.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:23PM (#392215)

    Even people without insurance don't pay full price, if they are smart. When I didn't have insurance, I would go to the doctor and just ask, "how much do I need to pay in cash, right now, to make this bill go away?" Almost always, I'd get at least a 60 percent discount as an initial offer. I'd always remind the office manager, who was almost always called by the desk jockey, that they were better off just taking my money now, then wasting it dealing with insurance or collections headaches.

    Of course, the real way to fix this is to require doctor offices to do what every other business has to do: post their prices ahead of time so you can compare prices BEFORE you go. You'd be amazed what real competition can do. You already see this with the various retail clinics that have began to pop up. The nearby doctor's price for strep tests dropped by an order of magnitude after the nearby pharmacy started offering them.