241–250 of 276 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> price negotiator Would you prefer the government to negotiate the price of your car for you? Markets are a powerful tool
In the case of the US, the "free market" have utterly failed us with regards to healthcare.
Saving a few bucks on prescriptions is not worth selling my data to Amazon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Almost every other wealthy, developed country guarantees healthcare itself, not the right to get surprise billed or screwed by your insurance company. I'm not sure who argued that "the right to not get surprise billed or screwed by your insurance company" is the optimum solution. The argument is that guaranteeing access to healthcare itself is attainable without price controls. > SNAP and ag subsidies are also just…
Guaranteeing “access” is functionally meaningless. You already have “access” to healthcare in the U.S., it just comes with all the fleecing and abuse unto death that we have under the status quo. When you argue for “access,” that’s precisely what you’re endorsing. This is why again, other countries guarantee actual healthcare and not these kind of doublespeak vagaries.
No doublespeak vagaries here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that's the whole point. SNAP and directed subsidies are decidedly NOT the same as government prices-setting. The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care, not government negotiation and price setting. Making sure everyone has access to healthcare is, for the most part, a universally held goal. The disagreement is whether the only way to achieve that is through government…
> The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care Food subsidies aren't targeted at the poor. The US government spends many billions of dollars subsidizing corn and soybeans and other crops that lower food prices for huge portions of America.
It's also not the same as price controls.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may all be true, but for me the trust is long gone. That's the price they pay for not taking the counterfeiting problem seriously. They've literally demonstrated that they prioritize sales and shipping efficiency over honesty.
What actions could they take, today, that would demonstrate to your satisfaction that they take counterfeiting and honesty seriously?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European now living in the US, my first thought is that the $2,000 shouldn't even exist to be collected, especially by invasive data broker rent seekers.
It’s collected (generally speaking) one way or another. Unfortunately right now it’s collected from the lower and middle classes, but no matter what you do drugs, treatments, doctors, hospitals, etc. cost money. It’s never, ever, ever “free”. If a drug costs $2,000/month there are probably some inefficiencies baked into the price, but even if it were $500/month, that $500 has to come from somewhere.
The "sticker price" of a drug is called the "usual and customary price" (U&C). This is supposed to be what you charge for a drug, and is generally based on the "average wholesale price" (AWP) of the drug plus a dispensing fee to cover other costs. The AWP, however, may or may not (usually not in the case of generic drugs) be related to the actual acquisition cost of the drug. It tends to be substantially higher.
The pharmacy bills its U&C price to the insurance company (or, more often, a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) contracted by the insurance company), and the insurance company tells you what it will actually pay you—this can be negative—and how much to charge the patient. Usually the pharmacy gets paid whatever the insurance company/PBM thinks it should cost to fill the prescription, and the patient pays a standard copay/coinsurance. If the patient has a large deductible or doesn't have insurance, this is where GoodRx et al. come in. They act as a PBM, allowing the patient to pay a price lower than the U&C while pocketing ~$5 or so of the "copay" for themselves (plus whatever data they get). Often independent pharmacies will just cut out the middle man and give you a better cash price (although this may violate their PBM contracts), but the big chains will need the coupon.
Depending on the difference between the AWP and the actual acquisition cost of the drug(s), this can be a substantial savings for cash patients or people with large deductibles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, just inelastic demand. They didn't need to to be competitive, and gig economy wouldn't work because...well, yikes.
Oh, don't you worry. The gig economy is coming for prescriptions, too. Uber Eats gave me a push notification about it the other day. https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/uber-health-launches-pre... Absolutely no way mixing the gig economy with PHI ends well.
Just a heads up, if you use this service PillPack and Amazon Employees have full access to your entire prescription history. Full name, social everything - it was common for employees to look up the info of celebrities / other employees for fun. Any prescription / healthcare info you give them will be sold back to SureScripts and used to sell you more garbage from Amazon ;) https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-mail-or…
Please go ahead and report the multiple HIPAA violations here: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/filing-a-complaint/index.html
> Amazon claims Prime members will be able to save “up to 80 percent off generic and 40 percent off brand name medications when paying without insurance. This was buried in the article, but is IMO a bigger deal. In the long run, this could really drive down drug prices.
This is just a shallow wrapper around https://insiderx.com/ which appears to be a GoodRx clone. See https://www.amazon.com/primerx .