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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: 2) by pe1rxq on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:24PM

    by pe1rxq (844) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:24PM (#392276) Homepage

    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.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:10PM (#392339)

    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'.