US Drugmaker Raises Price of Vitamins By More Than 800% (ft.com) 275
David Crow, reporting for the Financial Times: A US drugmaker is charging almost $300 for a bottle of prescription vitamins that can be bought online for less than $5, in the latest attempt at price gouging in the world's largest healthcare market. Avondale Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Niacor, a prescription-only version of niacin, by 809 per cent last month, taking a bottle of 100 tablets from $32.46 to $295 (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source), according to figures seen by the Financial Times. Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the version approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat high cholesterol. Avondale, a secretive Alabama-based company, put the price of Niacor up shortly after acquiring the rights to the medicine in a so-called "buy-and-raise" deal -- a strategy made famous by Martin Shkreli, the disgraced biotech entrepreneur.
If you want Vitamin B3 (Score:5, Informative)
Eat Vegemite.
Re: If you want Vitamin B3 (Score:2)
There are different kinds of Vitamin B3 (Score:2)
***BE VERY CAREFUL*** !!!
There is Niacinamide and then there is Nicotinic Acid
Nicotinic acid is preferred in the treatment of high cholesterol levels while niacinamide is not preferred in this treatment. This is because since niacinamide is a derivative of niacin, the cholesterol lowering properties in niacinamide are inhibited
Nicotinic acid is also preferred in treating circulatory problems because of its effects on the blood vessels and the role it plays in lowering high cholesterol levels hence preventin
Re: (Score:2)
Eat Vegemite.
Uah, I'd rather live with cracked skin, dementia, and diarrhea from the B3 deficiency.
Okay... (Score:3)
Eat Vegemite.
Now what do I do about the continuous vomiting?
Today's translations: (Score:4, Insightful)
"Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the [overpriced prescription] version"
Translation: Doctors get a kickback from prescribing a vitamin. Clueless patients fill the prescription and send it to their insurance. Everybody loses except doctors and drug companies.
"approved by the US Food and Drug Administration"
Translation: FDA approved vitamins that other vitamin manufacturers either cant get approval for or have to spend a fortune to get.
So drug company gets a government monopoly on a vitamin that doctors are all too eager to prescribe to their patients for $300 a pop.
Re:Today's translations: (Score:4, Insightful)
Clueless patients fill the prescription and send it to their insurance.
Lets not blame the patients. You go to a licensed, extensively trained doctor because medicine and pharmaceuticals are too complex to understand unless you get paid to do it full time. Not knowing that this is a brand name of something you can get dirt cheap is not being "clueless" in any meaningful sense of the word.
Translation: FDA approved vitamins that other vitamin manufacturers either cant get approval for or have to spend a fortune to get.
Or maybe there's just no sane manufacturer who sees a point in spending ANY money going through FDA approval when there's absolutely no need FOR the FDA approval on it.
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There are four broad categories of prescriptions. Over the counter ones, you could walk in a pharmacy or in a supermarket and buy them. If you want a tax deducion you have to give the Fiscal code to be printed in the invoice.
Full paid but with required prescription: sold only in pharmacies but you need a prescription from a medical doctor.
Only in hospital: you have to go in a hospital to get them, and normally a nurse will inject you and watch
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Translation: Doctors get a kickback from prescribing a vitamin. Clueless patients fill the prescription and send it to their insurance. Everybody loses except doctors and drug companies.
This is America. It's more likely that they can't afford vitamins, and need their insurance to pay for it. The Niacin flush will help keep them warm while they break up furniture into firewood.
Re:Today's translations: (Score:5, Informative)
And you can google for websites which independently test various vitamin/supplements. (https://labdoor.com/rankings/multivitamins). Reputable companies which provide quality vitamins/supplements are dime a dozen, its not rocket science. Also note that non-prescription vitamins and drugs ("capitalism in action") are dirt cheap, versus FDA approved prescription drugs (government in action) such as Niacor, Epipen, etc are only affordable to lottery winners.
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Monopoly pricing is not capitalism in action. Fraud is not capitalism in action.
You clearly don't know the meaning of the term or are just trolling.
Any response will be defecated upon.
Re:Today's translations: (Score:5, Insightful)
Monopoly pricing is not capitalism in action. Fraud is not capitalism in action.
You're right, it is unregulated capitalism in action.
Without laws to discourage and punish it, fraud is just another way of making extra profit. And any business would love to be a monopoly given the chance.
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Any response will be defecated upon.
You might want to rethink that. Unless you really dislike your screen.
Re:Today's translations: (Score:5, Interesting)
Prescription niacin does have a different formulation from over-the-counter niacin and more importantly, you are guaranteed it will have exactly the amount of niacin it says on the label.
Looking up the composition in manufacturers labelling, that is not true in this case. This is a perfectly ordinary 500 mg of niacin in a perfectly conventional tableting composition (croscarmellose sodium, hydrogenated soybean oil, magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose). There is absolutely nothing special about this.
And 500 mg of niacin is not some special calibrated dose, nor is the body sensitive to the exact amount of niacin ingested. The dosing for chlolesterol treatment is basically to take it in large excess (1000-3000 mg/day), the body excretes the excess.
And I googled "vitamin fraud" and found no indication that there were any problems with vitamins from name brand manufacturers (off-brand generics are of course problematic).
So none of your reasons are applicable in this case. Indeed this looks like an invitation to separate corrupt MDs, profiting from kick-backs, from real doctors who care about their patients. All a real doctor need do is recommend a name-brand niacin tablet as a replacement. Even at the pre-jack-up price of $33 a bottle they should have done that. The special name on the bottle is worth little or nothing/
niacin types and doses (Score:2)
"Instant release" can vary by tablet construction and meals. A typical aimpoint is 3000 mg per day in divided doses.
The longest, slowest, extended release forms can become toxic at high doses and should be removed from the market. It took makers a number of years to optimize the intermediate release forms for cutting cholesterol and minimizing the flush or initial burn in. The supplement End
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Sorry, ... thousands part of a gram.
there is no vitamin where the body needs 3000mg of intake per day.
"mg" stands for "milli gram"
3000mg would be 3gram
That is an insane high amount for a normal mortal.
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A redbull has that much and is much cheaper
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A redbull has that much and is much cheaper
Unfortunately, it tastes like redbull.
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I did google vitamin fraud and found non relevant (Score:2)
Exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)
... more importantly, you are guaranteed it will have exactly the amount of niacin it says on the label.
If I have this right:
Actually, you're guaranteed that the company did tests that show that, if it is not beyond the expiration date and hasn't been improperly stored, the drug will have at least 95% of the activity it claims on the label (for the on-label applications).
That's a heck of a lot tighter than OTC vitamins (even absent fraud). But let's be careful about saying "exactly".
(Lots of drugs are still quite potent far beyond their labelled expiration dates, though you don't necessarily know HOW potent. The manufacturing-to-expiration time is often when the company decided the formulation had adequate shelf life and stopped paying for testing, rather than the point where the drug degraded enough that it was close to missing the potency requirements.)
Re:Exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
Most vitamins don'r degrade at all.
Why would they?
Relatively constant temperature, dry, no light. How do you guys think stuff can "degrade" in such conditions?
Kid: "Hey mom! Look at this! This Himalaya salt has a 'best consume before 2022' date! It must be really good!"
Mom: "yeah, we are so lucky! They dug out this perfect fine salt just last year, after it spent millions of years there! Just before the expiring date!"
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dry
Air has zero moisture content where you live ?
How do you guys think stuff can "degrade" in such conditions?
Americans bottle their pills in groups of hundreds. Every time they take one out - multiple come in their hand and they put back the excess in the bottle. Taking the microbial growth on their skin along with them. Along with oxygen - the second strongest elemental oxidising agent. Along with other microbes in the air at that time. Somebody sneezed in the room shortly before this event, so microbes in small balls are descending to the ground at a small terminal v
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Vitamin stability (Score:3)
Most vitamins don'r degrade at all.
Care to bet on that [dsm.com]? Unless you can store them in a thermally stable environment with no exposure to light, humidity or oxygen there what you just said is demonstrably not true.
Kid: "Hey mom! Look at this! This Himalaya salt has a 'best consume before 2022' date! It must be really good!"
Salt is not a vitamin [wikipedia.org].
MD here (Score:5, Insightful)
"some doctors still prefer to use"
If your doctor does this, just find a new doctor. There is no good reason to put up with this.
Ho boy (Score:5, Informative)
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"some doctors still prefer to use"
If your doctor does this, just find a new doctor. There is no good reason to put up with this.
I see this as more a symptom of the medical system. Where I live doctors prescribe drugs, not brands. The pharmacist will then give you options including generic manufacturers, and marketing of drugs to patients is banned for anything other than basic over the counter medication.
I've never asked my doctor if ${BRANDNAMEDRUG} is right for me.
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I can imagine that there's still quite a few places in the US where the nearest doctor is a few dozen miles away, with the next nearest one double that.
Not everyone always has a choice of doctors.
Statins (Score:4, Informative)
Artificially expensive niacin is still better than statins [wikipedia.org], another cholesterol-lowering drug that is expensive and toxic for muscles (yes, heart included, that is the funny point)
Re: (Score:2)
I found the citation online [slashdot.org].
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Citation please.
Can't you follow a link? The wikipedia page has a whole section on side effects on muscles.
How about... eat healthy (Score:3)
There are plenty of foods that can give you the necessary vitamins. Eat some veggies and a reasonable amount of real beef/chicken or other fatty foods and balance it out in your diet with good amounts of other vegetables and fruits so it will be taken up by your body. Drink some wine and beer while you're at it too, within reason, you can get all this food and more within 15 minutes for a family of 4 with less what you'll spend for a single person at McDonalds.
Taking vitamin supplements is generally a waste since you're taking in more than your body needs, so most of it is simply excreted and your body needs other chemicals to even absorb them properly.
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What you say is true, in general. But the anti-cholesterol effect of high dose niacin treatment is independent from its use as a vitamin. It is a vitamin that acts as a (safe, OTC) cholesterol treatment drug in high doses.
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Awesome. Why don't you publish a refutation of https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] and many of its citations ?
Government-enforced insurance-industry subsidy (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, but the government forces us all to subsidize the insurance industry (thanks to the Affordable Care Act), so should we be surprised that this happens? They have deep pockets thanks to all of us.
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This is when lynching is appropriate (Score:2)
The evil assholes involved in this should be afraid to show themselves in public for fear of immediately being beaten to death by an angry mob.
Why the left liberals are on fire in US right now (Score:2)
Besides Trump shit like this is one of the reasons. Americans are tired. Americans once thought only poor people who made bad choices do not get free healthcare and that due to capitalism the US healthcare is superior to Europe and Canada where they come to the US due the superiority ... which was the view in the 1990s.
Greed, corruption, automation, and insanity on the right where the GOP is very very far right and crazy has changed things.
America is historically anti communist due to the end of World War I
Re: (Score:2)
Whee! Time for some off-topic speculation!
Some initial disclaimers:
1) I'm going to assume Trump isn't impeached, imprisoned, has a stroke and dies or just decides its too much work and that he does indeed run again in 2020.
2) I'm going to assume that there's no amazing superstar Democrat coming out of left field (har har pun) that I've never heard of and therefore of course can't foresee.
With that out of the way we have on the right well.. Trump. Since we've assumed he's not impeached, we'll also assume t
Re: (Score:2)
I should add a third assumption:
3) We don't have WW3 break out or a Yellowstone eruption or something similarly disastrous that just flat out changes everything and makes all current politics somewhat irrelevant.
Production costs nothing ... (Score:2)
Considering that production of stuff like that basically costs nothing, $5 for 100 pills is already a rip off.
What is wrong with just eating healthy? You don't need vitamin supplements.
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Considering that production of stuff like that basically costs nothing, $5 for 100 pills is already a rip off.
What is wrong with just eating healthy? You don't need vitamin supplements.
Reading through this thread it seems to be the case that we are talking about a vitamin being used as a specific drug to treat cholesterol, rather than general vitamin supplements, which are indeed a waste of time and money for almost everyone bar people with specific medical conditions.
This is a genuinely educational story for once, and makes a change from puff pieces about fucking bitcoins.
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What is wrong with just eating healthy?
- A lot of people don't know how to cook a proper meal.
- A lot of those that do don't have the time.
- And even then you also need the self-discipline to avoid eating crap -- which is created to intentionally be as flavorful and desirable (and even addictive) as the manufacturers can legally manage.
- And pretty much anything you don't cook yourself from raw ingredients is going to be unhealthy in one way or another.
- And depending on your view of things like GMO, getting healthy raw ingredients in the first
Time for anti-gouging laws (Score:2)
markets can work beautifully in many cases since it allows consumers to decide how the money is spent and can allow choices and competition.
But, its time for some anti-gouging laws because this is getting outrageous. Don't confuse the issue of consumer driven choices on what they want to buy and the idea that we need some regulations here to stop the consumer from being abused by these kinds of tactics. An anti gouging law of course doesnt mandate the consumer what kind of vitamin to buy but would stop them
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This is a patented drug. There is, by definition, no market or competition. Just a government-granted monopoly.
In this case it sounds like there's an (unpatented) over-the-counter alternative that's not exactly the same drug but close enough for most people. So that's good I guess. Makes the story a little bit more palatable than the Martin Shkreli one from a couple years ago.
And this medicine does not even work (Score:3)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Consumers can control this... (Score:2)
Consumers need to take responsibility for themselves, their health, and their finances. Know what your doctor is doing, know what medicines are being prescribed. it's your health, after all, and ultimately also your wallet.
Example: I went in to a clinic for an ultrasound of the other day. While I'm sitting there, the doc places his ultrasound gadget on some unrelated body-part. On my bill appears a charge for Fr. 60. I can either blindly accept the bill, or I can apply my brain, go back to the doctor's off
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This may have been a decent argument in 1760 when nearly the entirety of human knowledge could be summarized in a few dozen volumes and a well-read person could be expected to have a reasonably good grasp of most fields of scientific research of the time.
In 2017 when English Wikipedia alone has over 5 million articles. If you take that as a roughly equivalent summary as with the above, that would take thousands upon thousands of volumes.
Basically, there's just no way a person can be expected to know everyt
The Shkreli Maneuver (Score:3)
Let's call this sort of thing "The Shkreli Maneuver".
Niacin Tablets? (Score:3)
I bought the powder! That stuff is super cheap in powder form and isn't that slow release namby-pamby crap, FEEL THE BURN! I'm not immune the to "Niacin Sunburn", but I rarely get it anymore. If I happen to be a little dehydrated or I drink the stuff too fast I still get one, but if my wife picks up the cup I've been drinking from and just sips it BURN!!!
I bought this [a.co] over a year ago and I'm still using the same canister (I should take it more regularly, I've gotten lazy about getting a morning drink together).
Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations. In just a few words, you managed to betray a staggering amount of ignorance with regards to;
1. vitamins or their "development"
2. socialism
3. life expectancy in "socialist" countries (hint: it's higher and increasing) such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, compared to USA (hint: it's lower and decreasing).
4. health care costs in "socialist" countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, compared to USA.
I suppose we can only blame the - equally - sorry state of education in the USA.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Holy shit! Godwin's law AND Poe's law rolled into one comment!
You win my Internet today!
Re: (Score:2)
Woah, wait a second here... Did you get approval from the Elders of the Internet?
Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm currently living in the United Kingdom. Within five minutes' walk of my home are three places - one pharmacy and two shops - where I can buy vitamins, with no prescription.
They also sell prescription strength ones for which you do need a prescription. If you get low on Vit-D it's not all that unusual to get prescribed some.
Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. (Score:5, Informative)
Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.
Tell that to the Colleges and Universities that actually perform most biotech research, largely backed by taxpayer funds. Socialize costs and privatize profits now that's good old American capitalist ingenuity for you
Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are an idiot.
In European countries etc. you are supposed to get drugs by a prescription. Not by "buying them cheap" in a drug store.
Of course they are available ... but not for "sale" to medicate a kid with out professional supervision, moron.
In Asia, I pay 2 cents per pill for an "obsolete drug" that stops some common forms of cancer metastasis but is unadvertised
Care to name that drug, so the rest of the world can survive cancer metastasises, too?
Re: (Score:2)
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In European countries etc. you are supposed to get drugs by a prescription. Not by "buying them cheap" in a drug store.
Depends on what sort of 'drugs' you're talking about. Things like vitamin supplements or paracetamol you just buy in a supermarket her in the UK (or pay ten times as much for branded products in a Health Store if you choose). They have to meet legal standards because of evil government regulations stopping you selling rat poison as aspirin, so yes there is a barrier to entry.
But things like anti-depressants, yes you need a prescription and quite right too.
To good to be true? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any why is that I wonder? An obsolete miracle drug that stops the spread of common forms of cancer, it is cheap to make, and nobody outside Asia makes it or uses it... Doesn't that sound a little fishy to you? At what point does your bullshit detector go off? Asian 'medicine' is notorious for all sorts of worthless quack treatments and the FDA was created to keep useless, dangerous, and addictive medicine away from people. They aren't perfect, but they do a pretty good job of that.
If you have a real condition that is treated by this 'medicine', I am happy for you and I wish you a long life. But you should really read what you wrote and think carefully about why the entire rest of the world isn't using this miracle drug.
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In Asia, I pay 2 cents per pill for an "obsolete drug" that stops some common forms of cancer metastasis but is unadvertised, ignored and/or unavailable in most of the world. This saves me $20-30,000 a month in the US for a biotech drug. Any why is that I wonder? An obsolete miracle drug that stops the spread of common forms of cancer, it is cheap to make, and nobody outside Asia makes it or uses it... Doesn't that sound a little fishy to you? At what point does your bullshit detector go off? Asian 'medicine' is notorious for all sorts of worthless quack treatments and the FDA was created to keep useless, dangerous, and addictive medicine away from people. They aren't perfect, but they do a pretty good job of that. If you have a real condition that is treated by this 'medicine', I am happy for you and I wish you a long life. But you should really read what you wrote and think carefully about why the entire rest of the world isn't using this miracle drug.
OP has the same plausibility as those people who say the ZOG NWO bought up the everlasting lightbulb/car that can run on water because they want to keep humanity enslaved.
Dream on (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
To be fair, Americans tend to mean communism when they say socialism, not social democracy (e.g. Labour in the UK or the SPD in Germany), which is what Europeans tend to associate with that same word. On the other hand, many Americans (GP included) seem to think there are only two options: corporatocracy under a thin veil of makebelieve capitalism, like in the US, and communism, with no shades of grey and no other possibilities. Probably a symptom of living in a two-party system where everything is dumbed d
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Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.
Socialism is not an easy fix for cases like this. Socialism caused this case. Namely, it was caused by socialising the cost of inventions by a) granting a government-created monopoly to the inventors of this vitamin and b) creating a government bureaucracy with the power to test medicine for safety and efficacy,
In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.
The parts of that claim that
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First of all in socialism governments have no monopoly on invention, you are an idiot.
Secondly, vitamins are not invented. They simply exist. Fruits contain them, the skin produces them, meat contains them etc. Idiot.
You seem to think vitamins only exist in forms of pills and people need to eat them to be "more healthy" ... you are mistaken.
Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really flabbergasted at the trolls on this story. I mean for fucks sake, how do you imply capitalism was responsible for vitamins being "developed?"
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Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.
Because we all know companies would never take billions in state subsidies while morons like you fuck yourselves by believing that free market bullshit. Socialism for the rich, harsh reality for the free market fundies amongst the public.
Energy subsidies
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm [imf.org]
Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. See the manufacturing consent videos when you get the time.
Science on reasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ [youtube.com]
Pro
Re:Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains.
How about this? Give the FDA the power to investigate cases of rampant profiteering due to any medical-related patents. If a company is found guilty of profiteering, all patents related to the case are invalidated. Patents are a grant by the government (and the people it represents) to protect original research, which we want to encourage. But when companies abuse that private-public contract, they should be punished accordingly by the loss of those patents.
Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit! (Score:5, Informative)
These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains .
These "idiots" specifically target Medicare which is forbidden by law from doing cost/benefit analysis or from negotiating costs, which means that while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.
This of course is by design, Big Pharma spends a lot of money on lobbyists and campaign contributions to keep the gravy train rolling
Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit! (Score:5, Interesting)
... while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.
Here's my complaint. After my wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor (GBM [wikipedia.org]) the day before Thanksgiving 2005, she was prescribed Temodar [wikipedia.org] for her chemotherapy treatment. The list price for one month of treatment (literally, one bottle of pills) was $11,000 US. The price using my BC/BS was $1,100 (10% copay) and the price using her Optima HMO was $40 -- and she would have required several months of treatment. If the drug maker can afford to sell drugs at the reduced/negotiated price to those people with insurance, they can afford to sell it at that price to everyone. Anything else is simply greed.
Susan died seven weeks after diagnosis in Jan 2006, having never finished that first bottle of meds.
Remember Sue... [tumblr.com]
A side note about that particular medication. The label warned to avoid handling the pills and breathing any pill dust as it can cause lung cancer. Really nice stuff...
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Ya, I'm aware there's more to the expense than the co-pay - I forgot to include that, and the part paid by insurance obviously varies - but the total price paid is negotiated by the drug maker and insurance company and is less than the raw list price -- though our co-pays are often based on that list price. I was simply using the BS/BS and Optima co-pays as references that probably reflect, to some extent, the total negotiated price paid by the insurer.
Thanks.
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Cancer is a bastard. Sorry for your loss.
But yeah, the list prices are outright blackmail. They'll charge as much as they can get away with or they damage your health. What is costs them to produce is irrelevant. You want to make an immediate impact on the price of medical care? Make drug and medical service discounts illegal. If insurance companies have to pay the same price as non-insured patients, costs will drop precipitously and immediately.
Oh and all those people out there who think medical companies
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which means that while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs
This is a fucked system in the first place. You shouldn't have to rely on an insurance to "negotiate" the cost of your life. The only thing an insurance provider should negotiate is with the client how much of a gap needs to be paid.
Price discrimination for medical services is not legal in most other countries, and outright regulated in many.
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Damned commies thinking that lives should be worth more than money.
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A beter approach might be yo allow Americans to shop the global market for compounds that meet the standards of European or Asian equivalents of the FDA. This would prevent US suppliers from monopolizing the market.
Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Surprise! Companies are in it for profit! (Score:4, Interesting)
As usual, you seem to be talking out of your ass. The Martin Shkreli [wikipedia.org] case is about a 64 year old drug, Dataprim, which has a small pool of users. Shkreli relied mostly on market inefficiency to raise the price. Basically, they bought Dataprim with the intention of raising the price, so they targeted a medically necessary drug that had no currently available alternatives. In their purchase agreement they required the previous owner to shut down 2nd party distribution to make sure no one could undercut their price. They knew since the user pool was so small, there would be limited incentive for other drug manufacturers to invest in producing a generic alternative.
The only role the FDA played was that they would require that a new dug actually be tested to ensure that it does what it's supposed to do, so they would have increased the cost to produce a new version of the drug by requiring quality control.
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Give the FDA the power to investigate cases of rampant profiteering due to any medical-related patents.
Sure, but worth pointing out there's no patent here in this specific case. They bought the brand name and the exclusive rights to sell it as a prescription, not exclusive rights to sell it whatsoever.
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These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains.
Err this is the USA we're talking about. Trump would likely see this as an example of capitalist excellence and then abolish the FDA while saying it will be better for all Americans to let the market self regulate.
Re: Surprise! Companies are in it for profit! (Score:2)
Excellent. Although invalidating the patents is definitely not punishment, itâ(TM)s merely correcting the wrong. Punishment would go further, like fining the corporation 1-10% of annual income, AND fining all employees involved 1-10% of annual salary. Accountability is seriously lacking in business and government.
Re:blame government (Score:5, Informative)
Goverment regulations cause this problem. Now that we are getting rid of NObamacare, this problem will go away. GUARANTEED.
This new administration could have been an opportunity to bring open-market forces to medicine. But so far, I see no indication of this happening. If anything, the swamp is getting deeper.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The current approach to "draining the swamp" is to hire the alligators or appoint them to cabinet positions.
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The current approach to "draining the swamp" is to hire the alligators or appoint them to cabinet positions.
o no, they ARE draining the swamp, it's just they ever specified which swamp and where it was being drained to.
Turns out it's being drained right into DC.
Re: blame government (Score:2)
This government dislikes regulation. There are probably a number of reasons why, but they were put in place to prevent corporations screwing over the little guy.
We are back to allowing the super rich to profit even more and not supporting our fellow man. IMHO you shouldnâ(TM)t run a country as a corporation, but as a family. A profitable government is not one acting in the best interests of it people.
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Free market medical move #1 was ending the ACA (Obamacare) mandate which would financially lock most people into FDA monopoly medicines and often poorly performing maimstream medicine. Many problems can be better addressed by the closer-to-natural-biochemistry of supplements, but first you need a little money leftover to start.
Niacor is just niacin [rxlist.com]. There's no patent on Niacin since it's a natural vitamin. You can still buy Niacin without any prescription for cheaper than it was on prescription before the change. [walgreens.com]
So... your rant about Obamacare and natural supplements doesn't make any sense but the actual story doesn't make any sense either, so I guess you win?
I'm guessing it's like if AOL raised it's rates 800 percent. People like you would immediately blame government interference even though that has nothing to do with
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Looks like there is competition at $5 online. So this is a non story.
Where is this FDB approved Niacin supplement available online?
Doctors prescribe the prescription version when a person's health is on the line since they can be assured that it contains the labeled amount of Niacin, while OTC products are not well regulated and can contain varying amounts of the vitamins as well as other fillers.
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Competition in pharmaceuticals? (Score:3)
It is a story because most doctors in the U.S. prescribe medicines by brand name. If the prescription forbids substitutions (a decision that was possibly made with the assumption that there isn’t much cost difference between generic and branded versions), or if if the brand name manufacturer had introduced any subtle change in the formula or presentation (for example, dosage of 295 mg instead of 300 mg, such that no perfectly identical generic will be found), the pharmacy will deliver the branded vers
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I have no doubt that if the only difference is your hypothetical 295mg vs. 300mg, my pharmacist would be faxing in a change request to get the generic instead.
It’s not hypothetical, it actually happened to me. By chance, I had searched the web before going to the pharmacy, only specifying the active ingredient name and not the dosage in the search, which returned results showing generics available for 8 USD. That was dumb luck, but I didn’t know it at the time. Went to the pharmacy expecting to find that generic and was told the full price was over 8 times that and that there was no matching generic, no arguing. I was so stunned, I couldn’t quit
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My, my, are you STUPID. The company wouldnt be rising prices if they knew they couldnt get away with it
Not only that, demand will go up because people will demand the "$300 good stuff" not the "$5 garbage".
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Take an active role in your health care and question why you can't use a generic ...
And remember that, for some things, you really shouldn't use the generic - even when the FDA and your insurance company say it's just fine.
For example: Synthroid. This is a drug where:
- the activity level is critical - you're replacing (all or part of) an important signal in a broken (or degraded) feedback loop with a constant output
- but (unlike insulin) the tests are not easy enough to do real-time to rec
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Generics are the exact same as the originals.
Otherwise they would not get aprovales.
the generic formulations are often far off the claimed dose ... in a lab you can not even figure the difference between the original and the generic, unless one of them adds some trace amounts of marker material.
How should that be possible? Hm? You sell drug A with Xmg amount of chemical Y
How brain washed are you to believe such nonsense?
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Eh? I take levothyroxin - and synthroid is exactly that. I usually get whatever generic the pharmacy I choose to visit has available. Never felt any difference for the past 10 years.
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Doctors sell drugs marketed to them by drug companies.
Take an active role in your health care and question why you can't use a generic (which your insurance will most likely require) before you blindly pay for something.
This is one of the advantages of the NHS here in the UK. The doctors aren't selling you anything. They will happily tell you to buy a generic over the counter medicine if it's available.
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Capitalism is by nature unethical. Its entire premise is that people are naturally unethical and it relies on competition to drive unethical practices out and leave only the best of the best.
But in order to do that, capitalist theory relies on:
a) competition existing.
b) consumers being informed.
Neither of those things exist in many markets. In the specific case of patented drugs, the patent explicitly blocks competition so (a) is immediately off the table.
Luckily, most people are not actually naturally un
Amoral not immoral (Score:3)
Capitalism is by nature unethical.
Only if you contort and narrow the definition of ethics and capitalism to fit a very contrived view point. Capitalism is neither ethical or unethical. A person can be a capitalist and be very ethical or they can be unethical. Capitalism as a philosophy and an economic system is amoral. (which is different from immoral) It is the society around it and the norms of that society that determine whether an action taken is ethical or not.
it relies on competition to drive unethical practices out and leave only the best of the best.
Capitalism has nothing to do with ethical or unethical practices. Never