Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Thursday January 03 2019, @06:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the same-old-new-year dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Source: Big Pharma ushers in new year with price hikes on hundreds of drugs

More than three dozen drug companies welcomed the new year with sweeping price hikes on hundreds of medicines, according to a new analysis from Rx Savings Solutions, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The drugs that saw list-price increases on January 1 ranged from generics and blood-pressure drugs to brand-name prescriptions such as the dry-eye treatment Restasis. The average price jump blew past inflation at 6.5 percent, with some medicines seeing double-digit increases—bucking many drug companies' vows to keep such periodic hikes under 10 percent.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday January 04 2019, @02:27AM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 04 2019, @02:27AM (#781856)

    Here's the part you seem to be missing: It's not that money is coming from someone else's pocket into your own, it's money that was going to someone else's pocket from your pocket is now not going there.

    Right now, you either are going uninsured, or have some kind of private health insurance, or you're covered by a government program. If you go uninsured, then you're completely screwed if something seriously bad happens to you (illness or serious injury), so that doesn't make for a good plan. If you're covered by the government, you're already funded by tax dollars, so single-payer is by definition no worse.

    So that leaves private insurance to the tune of something like $600 a month. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 85% of that money has to go to health care (before the ACA, even less of that money went to health care). Which means that you just paid $90 for your insurance company's advertising, executive compensation, and a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn't help you out at all. Even completely ignoring any negotiating benefits from single-payer, and even if you make government bureaucracy out to be more inefficient than corporate bureaucracy, your insurance company's executive compensation alone can pay for a *lot* of civil service bureaucrats. So, when the dust settles, you're probably paying something like $550 for exactly the same health care you had before, saving you $50 a month, or $600 a year, and the losers are executives, marketing droids, and of course shareholders who had to reinvest their money somewhere else. What's the problem?

    A particularly telling aspect of this was that back in 2010, with the Affordable Care Act, the insurance companies fought tooth and nail to prevent the "public option", where the government would run an insurance plan alongside the private insurers and give citizens the option to buy in. The plan was for the public option to be funded entirely by the people who chose to use it. So why were the private insurers against this, if the government bureaucracy was so horribly inefficient that they couldn't possibly compete with the private sector?

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 04 2019, @11:47AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday January 04 2019, @11:47AM (#781997) Homepage Journal

    Interesting argument but I'm getting ready for a ten hour drive a day before I was scheduled to. Drop me a bump reply to leave me a reminder message and I'll get back to you tomorrow.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 04 2019, @08:39PM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday January 04 2019, @08:39PM (#782223) Journal

    You know, in the end it all boils down to who gets stuck with the paperwork. I pay taxes for the government to do it (here's lookin' at you, IRS!). That is kind of its purpose, along with the common defense and all that. Why don't we have universal health care? It is pure antipathy, all the false pretenses and bean counting are based on that. There is nothing else. The money issues just aren't issues, they are distractions, rationalizations for hatred. There's more than enough, just have to manage it transparently. But until there there is sufficient demand, voiced through the vote, nothing is going to happen beyond the continuing slow decline.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..