71–80 of 95 posts
Why is insulin not an over the counter medicine? Would having it OTC cause problems on the scale of alcohol? What's the "value add" of having a doctor renew an insulin prescription?
A better response is that several older, more difficult to manage versions are available over the counter.
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There is a great living for someone to make a generic. No need to make bazillions. Crowd fund it. Or, regulate. Both would be just fine with me.
A generic already exists - Walmart insulin. Apparently it’s not that great.
Know how pharmacies work and you can get it for about the same price elsewhere:
I still think the approach I proposed years ago would be a big help: Turn the usual arguments on their head, prohibit all negotiation. Drug companies would be required to sell to all customers at the same price. This would end all cost-shifting, it's fair for all and forces the drug companies to actually compete on the end price. This would end this sort of preferred drug shifting, it would end the game of state Medi…
> Drug companies would be required to sell to all customers at the same price. This would end all cost-shifting, it's fair for all and forces the drug companies to actually compete on the end price. Then you only sell the drugs that do profit, and stop making the ones that cost money. You cant make people do what they don't want to do, pharma is no exception. The source of this problem is patent law, importation rest…
This is the situation we're in now. Just different people shoulder differing amounts of the cost. Equal pricing won't change the fundamental economics of drug research.
Luckily I never had to take insulin, as I am not diabetic. I had a dog, however, who needed it. She was prescribed Humulin-N, which is not generic. The generic insulin would not be adequate for her, according to the vet. When I got to the pharmacy, I was amazed to learn that it would cost us ~200 USD each time I needed a vial, which I would not be able to afford; I had pet insurance, but it wasn't any help. I have fa…
You can get novolin-n at Walmart for about $26 a vial without a prescription. I’m a type 1 diabetic and fallback to this when I’m unable to get a prescription.
You probably know this better than I, but the doctor advised us that Humulin N and Novolin N are not interchangeable; while they are the “same” insulin (NPH), the manufacturing process is different, affecting dosage.
In our pet’s case, the Dr. had conducted a series of exams to determine Humulin N dosages — which he advised us we would have needed to redo if we switched her to Novolin.
I think in humans it is easier to get blood readings, but in the dog’s case the Dr. needed to keep her in hospital to do a series of “curves;” this was expensive, so we did not want to redo.
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Possibly because there's an opt in gap between "I need larger breasts" and "If I don't find a way to pay for my chemo, I'll die"?
Sure, the stakes are much higher, but people often choose their physician based on skill. Why not throw cost into the mix as well? Right now that’s impossible.
This is utterly wrong on the face of it.
I always say this, but reading that makes me think thank God for the NHS in the UK. Health and education should never be a business. The pharmaceutical companies are so strong and greedy in the US they want people on their drugs, rather than look for preventing the problems. They often lambast and send confusing scientific studies out to ensure no alternative therapies succeed over their drugs.
In the US, dental and vision care are much more business-like than healthcare in general. Prices are reasonable and care is quite advanced. If there was no protection racket, dentistry would be even cheaper. Which isn't to say that running them as businesses is necessarily the right idea, but the regulatory morass that is broader US healthcare probably doesn't teach us everything there is to know about healthcare as…
And yes, $200 is still ridiculously expensive for a filling. Here in The Netherlands I’d pay ~$104 for a multi-sided composite filling (the most complicated filling you can get). For the cheapest (one-sided amalgam) I’d pay ~$25. Local anesthesia would be ~$8.
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Sure, the stakes are much higher, but people often choose their physician based on skill. Why not throw cost into the mix as well? Right now that’s impossible.
> but people often choose their physician based on skill. This is utterly wrong on the face of it.
I know plenty of cancer patients who got referrals to several of oncologists, interviewed them, then selected the one they thought was best equipped to treat their cancer.
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Possibly because there's an opt in gap between "I need larger breasts" and "If I don't find a way to pay for my chemo, I'll die"?
Sure, the stakes are much higher, but people often choose their physician based on skill. Why not throw cost into the mix as well? Right now that’s impossible.
It's not that, it's that the cancer treatments are non-optional. Optional treatments have the luxury of price comparison and choosing the perfect vendor - cancer waits for no man and it shouldn't be the market deciding whether someone lives or dies.
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> Drug companies would be required to sell to all customers at the same price. This would end all cost-shifting, it's fair for all and forces the drug companies to actually compete on the end price. Then you only sell the drugs that do profit, and stop making the ones that cost money. You cant make people do what they don't want to do, pharma is no exception. The source of this problem is patent law, importation rest…
> Then you only sell the drugs that do profit, and stop making the ones that cost money. This is the situation we're in now. Just different people shoulder differing amounts of the cost. Equal pricing won't change the fundamental economics of drug research.
Cost-shifting is a valuable effect in the pharma industry, because high profit-margin technology might subsidize low-profit high cost drugs.
Price differentiation is usually net positive effect, but being inequitable people have a reaction against it and more so in health related services. If you could only sell 1 type of seat in an airplane, for example, you would have lots less flying than today, by reducing the amount of rich people flying business/first because of loss of quality, and by reducing the median/average person because of increased cost.
So yes, from an economic standpoint, equal pricing has an effect on the research and development of a product. This should be obvious in this community, for example, look at Google. Almost everything loses money but search. Equitable pricing would make search cheaper, and all the other services paid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, the stakes are much higher, but people often choose their physician based on skill. Why not throw cost into the mix as well? Right now that’s impossible.
> Sure, the stakes are much higher, It's not that, it's that the cancer treatments are non-optional. Optional treatments have the luxury of price comparison and choosing the perfect vendor - cancer waits for no man and it shouldn't be the market deciding whether someone lives or dies.
I think opinions like yours above always stem from the naive assumption that all life is worth infinite at any point, so any obstacle to prolong it is a failure. Well, its not. Some treatments are expensive and cost is definitely something to take into account. If you get cancer and the treatment to save you is 100 million dollars, you better have them, because other people should not pay for that lavish expenditure.