11–20 of 114 posts
What this letter did not address is the fact that the US is hoarding almost all of Gilead's Remdesivir in the upcoming few months. Leaving the rest of the world with almost nothing. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-w...
> In the U.S., the same government price of $390 per vial will apply. Because of the way the U.S. system is set up and the discounts that government healthcare programs expect, the price for U.S. private insurance companies, will be $520 per vial. Sigh How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight f…
> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.
[0]: https://www.citizen.org/article/the-real-story-of-remdesivir... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/opinion/prep-hiv-aids-dru...
> In the U.S., the same government price of $390 per vial will apply. Because of the way the U.S. system is set up and the discounts that government healthcare programs expect, the price for U.S. private insurance companies, will be $520 per vial. Sigh How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight f…
> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.
They say the goal is to help as many people as possible, and that this principle has guided their development and pricing of the drug. How do they reconcile this principle with the huge price difference between the USA and the rest of the world? Or between the developed world and the developing world? I assume they are still making a profit selling doses at low costs to developing countries. If the goal is to help as…
They say the goal is to help as many people as possible, and that this principle has guided their development and pricing of the drug. How do they reconcile this principle with the huge price difference between the USA and the rest of the world? Or between the developed world and the developing world? I assume they are still making a profit selling doses at low costs to developing countries. If the goal is to help as…
Why would you assume that, instead of assuming that the high prices in the developed world are subsidizing losses elsewhere? (Or, at least, that they are amortizing R&D costs with the prices in the developed world, and doing so allows them to make a profit selling more of it above the marginal cost of producing more.)
> In the U.S., the same government price of $390 per vial will apply. Because of the way the U.S. system is set up and the discounts that government healthcare programs expect, the price for U.S. private insurance companies, will be $520 per vial. Sigh How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight f…
> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.
Not a scholarly article, intentionally. I wanted to give a flavour of the existential (to our health system) nature of the problem of US style drug pricing.
There's also the small matter of pricing varying highly by country. Another more emotive example: https://www.drugwatch.com/featured/us-drug-prices-higher-vs-...
See also: https://www.drugwatch.com/featured/us-drug-prices-higher-vs-...
So actually, it is substantially better in Europe.
They say the goal is to help as many people as possible, and that this principle has guided their development and pricing of the drug. How do they reconcile this principle with the huge price difference between the USA and the rest of the world? Or between the developed world and the developing world? I assume they are still making a profit selling doses at low costs to developing countries. If the goal is to help as…
That doesn't really matter as the Trump administration has bought essentially the whole production capacity of Remdesivir for July, August and September.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-w...
> In the U.S., the same government price of $390 per vial will apply. Because of the way the U.S. system is set up and the discounts that government healthcare programs expect, the price for U.S. private insurance companies, will be $520 per vial. Sigh How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight f…
> How many years of normalizing and internalizing the utter insanity that is the US medical industrial complex does it take to be able to just say that with a straight face? I hate to tell you, but it's not better in Europe just because the racket is obfuscated by several more layers.
Here in the UK, there is exactly one layer: the NHS. It negotiates prices directly with drug suppliers, and as the sole buyer (monopsony) is able to get a great deal. It also sets the prices paid by consumers (the prescription price), which is a flat price charged for all drugs (yes really all of them) and is currently £9.15 (about 11 USD) for a prescription (i.e. a full course of multiple tablets of the drug). If you are given drugs in a hospital as part of an inpatient treatment the charge is usually nil.