re: Drug Prices (Pharmaceutical)

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You know how much money it costs to research and develop these drugs?

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You left out how it costs to send the sales reps to the Bahamas twice a year.

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Epi pens on hand. Price skyrocketed after 2007 to over $600

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This is the worst part to me. This didn't suddenly become expensive to make. They supposedly didn't raise prices for about 10 years

Aggravating to me that insulin analogs available 10 years ago (humalog, novolog, lantus) have prices that have gone up so much. Insulins are relatively expensive to make but the price increase far exceeds inflation/production costs.

Also - most of the meds originally listed don't cost patients that much. Those were list prices.

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One paid tens to hundreds of millions to develop the product and the other read it off a price of paper when the patent expired

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The first maker (Novartis for Lamisil) gets a 20 year monopoly. That should be more than enough to recoup their costs and still make billions in profits (they made 1.2 billion in 2004 alone)

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The first maker (Novartis for Lamisil) gets a 20 year monopoly. That should be more than enough to recoup their costs and still make billions in profits (they made 1.2 billion in 2004 alone)

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Sure but what about the tens of millions they need to develop the next drug that could save lives? Where is that going to come from? They fund R&D through current sales, it's not that complicated.

In a way you are buying medicines that don't exist yet as much as you are purchasing the pills that cost tenths of a cent to make now.

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A lot of those costs are funded by taxpayer dollars in the form of research grants.

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That is not how that works.

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The first maker (Novartis for Lamisil) gets a 20 year monopoly

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Assuming you are referring to patent life - I note the 20 years is from first date of filing the application, not from issuance or first instance of commercialization. Many drugs only have a decade of commercialization monopoly, if that.

Here is my hunch and I could be wrong...

High Drug prices are because of number of reasons which include but are not limited to: Medicare Part D, Medicaid, Doctors, and insurance.

Medicare part D has hole where the patients have to pay nearly the full costs of drugs until you get to a certain annual max. So if you are XYZ Drug Company, you price your drug above this price and the client goes straight to the max and client gets a subsidized rate from the government while the government picks up the rest.

Medicaid is listed for the obvious reason, someone else is paying for it and usually at no copay cost to the user. I have seen Children’s cough medicine in a retail package be given as a prescription.

Doctors are part of the problem too as they may prescribe a certain drug that may be on the shelf as over the counter in a certain dose, but be available as a prescription in another. For example, my dad at a time was prescribed Zyrtec in a 5 mg dose. But you can’t buy 5mg over the counter, or it had to be ordered and it costs extremely more than what is sold the over the counter.

Insurance same as above reasoning, except that there is a copay involved with some added contracts in regards to pricing.

The health care and insurance models have to change to be more realistic of the prices and what is the true cost. But no one wants to do that, they want to continue to try to game each other until one gets caught or called out on their extremely high prices.

Thank the lawyers for a lot of the cost. "Have you or someone you know ever taken any pharmaceuticals? You may be entitled to huge compensation"

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That is not how that works.

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That is 100% how it works, a ton of these drugs are partially developed or come out of research done at universities funded by taxpayer grants.