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A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

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Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#61

Post by terminalshort »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #35
Aurornis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Require phase 1 only. That proves safety, but not efficacy. Require the companies to publicly release all data from their evaluations to the public. It's my right to decide on the risk / reward tradeoff, not some worthless bureaucrat to decide for me.

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#62

Post by autoexec »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #9

in some part of europe, we have national healthcare so basically people don't think they are paying their medications, like there was some magic money. in that case, you don't care if you drug cost 10€ or 2000€ because you aren't spending a single € from your own wallet, at least if you don't factor in taxes. Contrary to the USA where it's a much more responsible market, people do pay for the medications or they get…

> I would think that americans would be much more vigilant about what medication they take

This is why I always check to make sure it's fiscally responsible before I start chemotherapy, or before buying that emergency inhaler for asthma, or before accepting paralytics and anesthesia when undergoing surgery. How fortunate that in America diabetics have the freedom to die rather than take overpriced insulin. Let the free market decide which child with leukemia deserves a bone marrow transplant and which deserves a casket! That's a much more responsible market than just having everybody chip in a small amount so that nobody needs to worry about the cost of the medications they need to live. Sure, in America millions will die or be bankrupted by healthcare costs every year, but that's better than spending a single $ from your own wallet if even a tiny fraction of it might help pay for someone else's medications right?

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#63

Post by hnuser123456 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #47
khannn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a blood thinner and the medication was very pricey. Didn't have insurance and the "savings card" covered fuck all unless you had insurance. There are three blood thinners on the US market and they all cost a lot.

If you don’t have insurance, you’re essentially fucked in the US but this thread is not referencing that situation. My CAT scan was billed for $10,000 but what I paid was about $200 with insurance. Without insurance I would owe $10k.

Why stop the conversation here? And if you don't have insurance but go to an ER (can't be turned away) and end up getting some expensive procedure you can't afford, you can just tell them that you're broke and they negotiate way, way down, or even just forgive it. And it's setup like this to ensure only people who have proper full time jobs or who can write a good enough sob story can get care. Because so many of the people in charge of this mess are far more obsessed with blocking out people they can't get enough data on or who aren't working, then figuring out reasonable public prices that make some effort to strike some fair market balance. So that if you have some savings and aren't employed, you are forced to find any job with benefits so you aren't left bankrupt, which makes taking care of health struggles harder as you have to work instead of take care of yourself.

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#64

Post by ksenzee »

zuppy wrote: post #42
Aurornis wrote: post #8

FYI 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…

what about the poor people? the ones that can't really afford insurance. i've heard multiple times that epipen prices are crazy expensive and that's a really basic drug.

If you’re really poor, you can get Medicaid. It’s the working poor who earn too much for Medicaid who are really shafted. The ACA tried to fix that for as many as it could, by expanding Medicaid to households making more money; the Republicans shut down the government to fight that expansion. It’s maddening.

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#66

Post by yunwal »

zuppy wrote: post #42
Aurornis wrote: post #8

FYI 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…

what about the poor people? the ones that can't really afford insurance. i've heard multiple times that epipen prices are crazy expensive and that's a really basic drug.

If you're poor you just wait until you're borderline dying and then go to the E.R. and get charged $120,000 and then never pay it and then have debt collectors calling you for the rest of your life.

Or you're on Medicaid if you live in a sane state.

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#67

Post by christkv »

xnorswap wrote: post #39
Insanity wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diag…

Most countries have both public and private. In Spain I have public and then private on top of that which 220 eur a month for a family of four all services included and no co-pay. The public option works to set a roof on what private insurance can charge.

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#68

Post by oakesm9 »

BeetleB wrote: post #29

If Americans didn't pay $800 for it, how would Europeans afford it?

Such an easily debunkable line with even the tiniest bit of critical thinking.

You’re basically saying the drug companies subsidise a loss in Europe by over charging Americans, right?

As the drug company is a private and doesn’t have to sell everywhere, why wouldn’t they just skip the loss making Europeans and just sell to Americans? They’d make more profit that way!

That must mean they make some profit from the European prices, otherwise they wouldn’t be bothering.

Re: A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S.

#69

Post by renewiltord »

terminalshort wrote: post #43

If a drug isn't one of the following it should be available over the counter. 1. heinously addictive 2. incredibly dangerous when not used exactly correctly 3. an antibiotic (due to the resistance externality) And for drugs that do meet one of these conditions, doctors should be able to write lifetime prescriptions for cases where the medication is used to treat a permanent condition. This probably covers 95% of non-…

What a brave thing to say on a message board which thinks having a conversation with a chatbot should be illegal lest you ask it how to deal with emotions.
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