If Americans didn't pay $800 for it, how would Europeans afford it?
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A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
31–40 of 274 posts
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#32Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#33And Medicare cannot negotiate drug prices until 2026 (). Medicare is also banned from re-importing drugs from other countries (ex Canada) at lower prices. Thank you president GWB, the Alliance to Improve Medicare, and AARP (!!!!) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1126891/
() Biden's inflation act gave Medicare permission to start negotiating drug prices in 2026. Who know what the current US Administration will do though.
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#34It’s very simple. In the US your pharmacy has a contract with the drug supplier that prevents the pharmacist from telling you that you could buy the drug without insurance for $10 while he charges you the $20 copay. As long as this is legal and your pharmacist’s duty isn’t to you the patient, don’t waste time worrying about the details.
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#35Nothing says capitalism and free market like good extortion on health products and services. That's the way to go USA.
There is no free market at play here. This is the result of FDA regulations not allowing anyone to sell it unless they did a New Drug Application first, which could cost a billion or more. Therefore nobody in the free market was allowed to sell it without putting up the capital first, which they have to collect back now. You could actually order this from amazon.de up until recently and have it shipped to you. That s…
Are you saying a completely free market for drugs would be a good thing?
An NDA requires peer-reviewed studies, and something that looks at least a little like scientific rigour.
Of course we could just not bother with that.
Is that really a smart thing to do?
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#36FYI for anyone who isn't familiar with the wacky US insurance situation: Nobody in the US actually pays $800 for the drug. That's the "list price" for insurance companies to pay. Even insurance companies don't pay that price because they negotiate their own rates with the drug companies, which are lower. Then the drug companies come in and offer a "savings card" which you apply at the pharmacy like another layer of i…
> So a lot of people who take this drug in the US actually pay $0 because they sign up for this card. They do not pay $0 because the insurance company raises the rates for all of their customers to cover the cost of all the red tape and time spent negotiating with drug companies over their bullshit. The insurance companies aren't eating those costs, they're profiting from them and it's us who end up footing the bill.…
Yep. And it's worse than that.
80% of prescriptions are controlled by 3 companies. You can look up the FTC report on it. All three of them own or are owned by insurance companies.
The insurance companies had their profit percentage capped, and so the only way they could increase profits was by increasing their share of the pie. So they bought medical providers and prescription companies.
Now the insurance company is both the buyer and the seller, but not the one who pays. We pay. So they raise the prices of the drug, raise the cost of insurance, and make a lot more money while staying in their profit percent cap.
All the way around, this is the opposite of a free market and the FTC should be breaking these companies up. And as everybody knows, all the way around, it is immoral, too.
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#37Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#38What's to stop congress from passing a blanket "most favored nation" law for VA + medicare on all pricing, inclusive of insurance rates and discounts? Seems like it would be fair and useful.
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#39FYI for anyone who isn't familiar with the wacky US insurance situation: Nobody in the US actually pays $800 for the drug. That's the "list price" for insurance companies to pay. Even insurance companies don't pay that price because they negotiate their own rates with the drug companies, which are lower. Then the drug companies come in and offer a "savings card" which you apply at the pharmacy like another layer of i…
I think that might be worse than just having the high price. Such a kafka-esque systems just to get medicine.
The best thing about universal healthcare isn't how much money I may or may not have to pay, it's that I literally don't once have to think about a bill or filling out a form to avoid paying too much.
I wouldn't care if I ended up paying more in tax than I would in an insurance model. The benefit is being able to 100% focus on my health instead of navigating a system to try to reduce what I'm paying.
When you're diagnosed with an illness, that's a huge peace of mind.
Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.
#40What's the price on TrumpRx.gov?