OMG! Drug prices up 100% - or higher

[antigop]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=12050

Drug companies are quietly pushing through price hikes of 100% — or even more than 1,000% — for a very small but growing number of prescription drugs, helping to drive up costs for insurers, patients and government programs.

The number of brand-name drugs with increases of 100% or more could double this year from four years ago, researchers from the University of Minnesota say. Many of the drugs are older products that treat fairly rare, but often serious or even life-threatening, conditions.

Among the examples: Questcor Pharmaceuticals last August raised the wholesale price on Acthar, which treats spasms in babies, from about $1,650 a vial to more than $23,000. Ovation raised the cost of Cosmegen, which treats a type of tumor, from $16.79 to $593.75 in January 2006.

The average wholesale price of 26 brand-name drugs jumped 100% or more in a single cost adjustment last year, up from 15 in 2004, the university study found. In the first half of this year, 17 drugs made the list.

[sakabatou]

1. Good thing I'm insured...

[antigop]

3. Don't you have co-pays? n/t

[backscatter712]

4. If you've watched SiCKO, you know that insurance might not help.

The insurers are jacking up their copays for prescriptions that expensive, and that's assuming the reptiles will let you have those prescriptions at all.

[Cleita]

9. I have insurance and what they pay now is less than the copay.

They aren't covering the raise in prices. I can't afford my meds any more even with insurance. Even the Medicare prescription high way robbery doesn't cover meds very well.

[proud patriot]

20. I have insurance, PPO too , but I also have a disabled son

who requires a minimum of 5 doctor appointments a month
as well as multiple long term medications .

Just because you have insurance doesn't mean everything
is covered . With insurance a third of our monthly income
goes to medical bills for our son .

[antigop]

27. I'm sorry we live in a country that allows its citizens to be treated this way.

So sorry, proud patriot.

[proud patriot]

36. We'll fix it

I have faith

[antigop]

42. I hope so....in the meantime, lots of people are suffering n/t

[sakabatou]

28. UPDATE

I'm covered under my parents for now, as I don't have a job and I'm disabled.

[proud patriot]

37. Big Hug

:hug:

[sakabatou]

47. Hope I find a job soon... or something

[backscatter712]

2. Jesus Christ. The stuff made of pure gold?

Jacking up the price for Acthar from $1,650 to $23,000 PER VIAL!!!

Fucking insane.

[Wizard777]

12. Lots of pharmaceuticals are actually made from Oil. What they don't put in your car at the pump.

They put in you at the pharmacy. Does the Bush family portfolio of oil and pharmaceutical stocks make more sense to you now?

[backscatter712]

13. Better living through chemistry.

or more like better profiteering through chemistry...

[TZ]

24. Ummm no.

When did BIOLOGICS and drugs become fossil fuels?

[TomInTib]

5. Screw that, I'm sticking to the illegal stuff.

Those prices haven't budged in quite some time.

[XOKCowboy]

6. Yeah a quarter of kind....

is still the same price as the last few years. Makes you wonder who are the criminals, huh?

[TomInTib]

11. No s**t.

I was going to write exactly that, but I got distracted.

[Booster]

7. I went to buy those little strips for testing your blood sugar. For

a count of 50 it was over $50 - WTF????? These things are maybe an inch long. The pharmacist told me to get a prescription from my doctor so my insurance would pay for it, but it's still ridiculous that they cost that much.

[Cleita]

8. Yep, I'm dropping my medications.

I can't afford them anymore. I was in line waiting for a prescription yesterday and the woman ahead of me was told her prescription was $1,020. She refused it and walked away.

[JackBeck]

10. The co-pay for the only med that I take went from $50 to $100 within a month.

Not to mention, my insurance company refused to pay for the full script. So not only am I not taking what the doctor prescribed because my insurance company refuses to pay for it, I'm cutting in half what medication I do receive, in order to make it through the month.

[Kceres]

17. Be careful cutting your scripts in half.

Sometimes take a less-than-therapeutic-dose of a drug is more dangerous than not taking it at all.

[TZ]

25. I would talk to your doctor....

A lot of docs are getting savvy in finding drugs they think the insurance companies are gonna pay for...Also have you tried appealing your insurance companies denial of coverage? You might win..insurance companies like to bully people into getting their way

[safeinOhio]

14. Try the farm supply stores

Great deals, same stuff.

[Vinca]

15. The worst part is most people who take prescription drugs are taking

some they don't need and are probably dangerous for them in the end. $23,000 for a drug is obscene.

[undeterred]

16. Another reason we should have single payer health care

for everyone. Limit what will be paid for drugs. They can take it or leave it and go screw themselves. I hate these greedy bastards.

[area51]

39. Single-payer healthcare.

"Another reason we should have single payer health care"

Exactly, we need single-payer NOW. Our govt. is practicing population control by making sure we don't transition to single-payer.

[Prophet 451]

18. Thank gods for the NHS

Since I live under socialised healthcare, the drug companies are limited in what they can charge us (since there's very few private health insurers in this country) and the NHS uses mainly generics anyway (to keep costs and therefore taxes down).

You guys should throw national strikes, million man marches and full blown riots until you get your own form of universal healthcare.

[antigop]

19. Naw...that would make too much sense...people in the US think they are "self-reliant"

Yeah, sure they are...until they get sick.

[Prophet 451]

48. No-one is "self-reliant"

With the possible exception of organic farmers, we all rely on the state in some form. Several years ago, I read a fascinating essay (if you find economics fascinating anyway) which pointed out that for all the conservative blather about government power and all the backyard anarchists, it is only possible to be self-reliant thanks to state power. Without the economic regulation and infrastructure, backing of currency and exchange controls that only government is capable of providing, your money is worthless.

[antigop]

49. "No-one is 'self-reliant'" -- that was my point. But people think they are --that's the problem. nt

[deaniac21]

21. I just got a gram of coke for $45. What chu talkin bout Willis?

[dysfunctional press]

30. i got news for you- that ain't coke.

nt

[deaniac21]

32. Nice analysis. I guess it didn't make your gums as numb as

your nuts. I always enjoy a message from an idiot.

[dysfunctional press]

43. if someone thinks that what they're getting is cocaine for $45/gram...

they're the idiot.

toot up. :hi:

[Faygo Kid]

22. The drug companies know the free ride is likely soon over. Like the oil companies, they act now.

All the leeches who have enjoyed ill-gotten gains during the eight years of George W. Bush are squeezing all they can out as the gravy train gets ready to leave the station.

[ncrainbowgrrl]

23. My anti-nausea medication costs my insurance 14,400 per year alone.

If I weren't insured, I'd be in big trouble.

[jbnow]

38. Not to be joking about drugs legal/illegal

but when my mom was on chemo in 1989 none of the anti-nausea medications worked and she was always sick, kept nothing down, was wasting away.
I bought some pot and took it up to her and it shocked me how well it worked. She was funny too. I didn't think you got high the first time but she started delighting in music she had ignored, getting all excited hearing the individual instruments and then how they went together...and she kept noticing how pretty the sky was or the feel of the breeze.

That's an aside, just a nice memory. The chemo didn't work in the long run but she gained weight and energy and the sparkle in her eyes, was out of bed and enjoying life again. I was so grateful.

A friend with breast cancer and insurance use to get her tamoxifen from Canada because paying 100% there was much less than her copay here.

Another friend went to Canada for her Provigil because she could get 3 months worth for less than what 1 month cost here. (The exchange rate was friendlier then)

[Ilsa]

26. It's such a simple plan: if you need meds and can't afford them, you die.

That's what they want. That's how they plan to solve the problems of the world. Meanwhile, the neighbors down the street feel that having 10+ kids isn't a population problem.

[KharmaTrain]

29. Who Cares About People's Health

Let's convulse endlessly about someone's sex life...or if they're a "celebrity" or not, or too bitchy or whatever...sure beats having to do the hard work of facing some serious problems in our society and the even harder choices on how to fix them.

Keep posting about Edwards or Obama's preacher or how Pelosi is everything evil and then some...just ignore the real issues, the real life and death issues at stake in November.

:sarcasm:

[Initech]

31. Fuck Big Pharma.

Hell, fuck big everything at this point. Pharma, oil, insurance, they all suck.

[JCMach1]

33. The Big Pharma rip off continues

and Americans continue to do nothing...

The prices reflect nothing but how passive people are in the States over this. I get pissed-off every time I have to fly home and bring my elderly parents medicines that cost 1/4 to 1/10th what they do in the U.S.

Oh yeah, and the healthcare system (this includes drugs) is open here... not nationalized health. And yet, drug costs are tiny.

Not only that for minor stuff, I can go to the pharmacy myself and take the medicines without a prescription.

What if you could just go to the pharmacy and treat that throat infection with anti-biotics for $10 or less?

[Raksha]

34. It sounds like they are trying to kill us.

What other explanation is there?

[Quantess]

35. No they're trying to get you hooked.

For example, I got hooked on Effexor-XR, anti-anxiety-antidepressant. After a while, I needed the drug to feel normal. I could not skip more than a day without feeling edgy. After 2 days without Effexor, I felt electric shocks in my head, known as "brain freeze" lasting a second, throughout the day. It is as bad as it sounds.

Trying to quit Effexor was a nightmare. I accomplished it, slowly.

Edit to add: it took me 2 months to get from 37.5 mg to zero. Toward the end, I opened up the capsules and counted the crumbles.

[old mark]

40. You also might want to know

that many medications sold by these big US companies are now made in China, either the component chemical compounds or the finished product.

The companies therby save millions on production costs, and increase profits several hundred % more, while selling you medicine made by the country who paints toddler's toys with lead and sells dogfood that kills dogs.

mark

[WinkyDink]

41. We are supposed to DIE. Sick people cost companes too MUCH! Come on; be a PATRIOT!

[progressoid]

44. If's expensive because of all the government regulations

That's what a repub told me a couple days ago.

[snappyturtle]

46. I'm not doubting what you were told BUT do these regulations keep

going up? Everytime I re-fill the prescription I have taken for 25 years the price is up. It used to stay the same. Thank goodness I have only one.

[area51]

45. Kick. (n/t)