The EpiPen that cost $75 in 2001 costs over $300 today

[kimblebee]

Forgive my ignorance I have read this in amazement so am I right in thinking that in the US and Canada you get no help from the Government for medication even for children?? Omg I am so shocked. I live in the UK you see. We have a free NHS system for all. I thought they might provide at least for children. How do you guys afford it!

My province has a program called Pharmacare. It's for people who don't have their prescriptions covered by private insurance (through work). It's based on your income for the previous two years. You pay a deductible and after that, your medications are covered by the province. Our medications are also way more affordable than the US.

 

[kimblebee]

Yep, that.

You're welcome, world.

It's also because your politicians are bought and sold by the drug lobbyists. I'm sure your government could change that if they really wanted to.

 

[mom2rtk]

It's also because your politicians are bought and sold by the drug lobbyists. I'm sure your government could change that if they really wanted to.

How much of it is because of politics?

How much is because we are subsidizing the price controls in other countries?

How much is because of the R&D for future drugs being done here?

I don't even pretend to understand an issue this complex well enough to start pointing fingers.

 

[Geoff_M]

It's also because your politicians are bought and sold by the drug lobbyists. I'm sure your government could change that if they really wanted to.

Yep, it's just that simple....

 

[pryncess527]

Forgive my ignorance I have read this in amazement so am I right in thinking that in the US and Canada you get no help from the Government for medication even for children?? Omg I am so shocked. I live in the UK you see. We have a free NHS system for all. I thought they might provide at least for children. How do you guys afford it!

Government assistance for children's health care is absolutely available in the US
It might still be costly -- I can not speak to the quality of help -- but there are government programs available. the largest national one in the US is CHIP -- Children Health Insurance Program. We also have Medicaid, which is income dependent

 

[Gumbo4x4]

DD11 & DW both need them, so it's not pretty here in the GUMBO house.

 

[mnrose]

Gee, it's just the free market folks. We all know regulation isn't the answer. Companies always do the right thing when left to their own devices. Let's eliminate all regulation and oversight and trust these companies! Life will get so much better when we do.

Heavy sarcasm there if anyone missed it.

I, for one, believe that it is morally wrong (and should be legally wrong) to make obscene profits off health care. Period. I'm all for profitability, but there should be some cap, especially when a single provider has a monopoly on it. Back in the day, AT&T was a monopoly and their "rate of return" (profit after ALL expenses) was legally regulated and capped at 11%. Their executives were paid well. It was a blue chip stock. But, prices were reasonable to the consumer. And, phone service was nearly universally available.

WTH is the reason we can't do this with medical care? Besides corporate greed that is.

 

[mom2rtk]

DD11 & DW both need them, so it's not pretty here in the GUMBO house.

Eh, what are the odds you would both need one at the same time? Can't you just share?









Kidding. That sucks.

 

[Pooh2]

I am not filling my Epi script this year. Going to take my chances with bendryl gels. The price is absurd and we now have a $6,000 deductible. I miss my pre-obamacare insurance coverage.

 

[Geoff_M]

Back in the day, AT&T was a monopoly and their "rate of return" (profit after ALL expenses) was legally regulated and capped at 11%. Their executives were paid well. It was a blue chip stock. But, prices were reasonable to the consumer. And, phone service was nearly universally available.

WTH is the reason we can't do this with medical care? Besides corporate greed that is.

There are a couple of key flaws with your analogy. Compare the rate of innovation within the telecommunications industry pre and post deregulation of that industry. Additionally, there were PLENTY of people that were upset about the amount of monies they had to fork over to Ma Bell each month. You weren't even allowed to own your own phones. Additionally, when the last time you thought about paying for "long distance"? It was cheaper prices that allowed company like MCI to flourish. It wasn't love for AT&T that caused people to associate this logo with the "Death Star":

 

[ColoradoDisneyFreaks]

Gee, it's just the free market folks. We all know regulation isn't the answer. Companies always do the right thing when left to their own devices. Let's eliminate all regulation and oversight and trust these companies! Life will get so much better when we do.

Heavy sarcasm there if anyone missed it.

I, for one, believe that it is morally wrong (and should be legally wrong) to make obscene profits off health care. Period. I'm all for profitability, but there should be some cap, especially when a single provider has a monopoly on it. Back in the day, AT&T was a monopoly and their "rate of return" (profit after ALL expenses) was legally regulated and capped at 11%. Their executives were paid well. It was a blue chip stock. But, prices were reasonable to the consumer. And, phone service was nearly universally available.

WTH is the reason we can't do this with medical care? Besides corporate greed that is.

There's 2 sides to the regulation as well. Why hasn't an FDA approved generic been allowed? What's holding up that approval? The original copyright time is intended to allow a drug company to recoup the cost of R&D, but the epi-pen has been on the market for decades, so shouldn't fall under that copyright time.

Instead of starting down the slippery slope of telling a company what they can charge or how much profit they can make, why aren't we asking the government to release the reigns of competition so that prices will come down?

 

[Geoff_M]

There's 2 sides to the regulation as well. Why hasn't an FDA approved generic been allowed? What's holding up that approval?

One is in the works, but from the article linked above it sounds like Teva screwed up the ANDA that they filed with the FDA.

 

[DizBelle]

Yeah, it isn't good to see. My sister was complaining about the new higher price increase in the epi-pen a few months ago to the family. She buys some for my nephew.

It seems to be the common thing to do though these past decades, raise medical costs. It goes in line with the $30 cokes, $200 bandaids, or some lab tests that cost the equivalent of the new car. Not to mention million dollar cancer treatments, heart disease costs, etc.

There seems to be little real interest from politicians, health officials, insurance firms, etc in addressing and changing the system due to the ever rising medical drug and hospital costs.

It is good though I feel that more people question health officials about costs and how diseases are addressed. With more and more health companies announcing they are dropping out and not offering health insurance due to ever rising costs, and not being able to make a profit, I imagine eventually the bottom will fall out of the gold rush.

There are a number of articles that provide different ideas on why American health costs, medical and drugs are so high. Time magazine had an article that many quote on the topic. Saw this also ~

Why Are US Health Care Costs so High?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/14/us-health-care-costs.aspx

This is an IMPORTANT statement from this article:

"When we debate health care policy in America, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?"

ACA (Affordable Care Act) did absolutely nothing to address the affordability of health care. All it did was address (to a certain extent) who pays for health care. So shortsighted and shameful. I feel like everyone got hoodwinked by our government with this nonsense.

And it is so difficult to figure out how much something will cost ahead of time. DH has this procedure done on his back on a semi regular basis. One facility he went to ended up billing his insurance around $3500. Another facility for the same exact procedure was $30,000. WTH is that about. After that, he tried to find out before getting the procedure how much each facility would charge so he could factor that into his decision on where to go. None of these places could tell him ahead of time how much the procedure could cost. They do this procedure dozens of times each and every week. They couldn't even tell him how much the baseline cost would be if everything goes as planned and there are no problems or unexpected issues. How in the world do they not know how much the baseline cost is for this procedure is when they do it hundreds if not thousands of times a year? All they tell him is that they have to bill the insurance before they know how much it will cost. What kind of nonsense is that?

When the Dr. office was trying to schedule his procedure (they do this procedure at several different facilities during the week), he was asking how much it costs at each of the facilities. The person on the phone couldn't tell him. After they ended the call, this person thought they hung up but they didn't and DH heard her complaining the other people in the office about DH and his questions. She said "why do people have insurance if they aren't going to use it?". Hello!!!!! THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!!! (He never made it known that they didn't hang up. He just sat there and listened to them talking about him.)

Here is is trying to be a good steward for his company which is self-insured and he keeps getting the run around. I swear, the health care industry is a racket.

Here's something else funny. He actually had this procedure yesterday (never could find out how much it will cost. Will have to wait for the EOB for that) and they asked him which "side" they were doing. He told them that he has pain on both sides and it was never addressed to him during his office visits nor in scheduling that they would do only one side. Every other time he's had this done, it was done on both sides. The doctor said that they typically only do one side because it is time consuming to do both sides. HELLO, it takes 30 minutes to do one side and only another 20 minutes to do the other. So, it will take 20 minutes of YOUR time today (that you WILL get paid for) or it will take another 4-5 hours of MY time (as the caretaker) and a full day of DH's time (because he has to take the day off of work) to schedule another procedure to do the other side. AND he would have to deal with the effects of anesthesia AGAIN.

We both honestly believe that they wanted to do the different sides on different days so that they could bill twice for this and get more money. It's a racket I tell you.

 

[Hikergirl]

Not sure if anyone saw this in the thread on the budget board, but one the posters there is an allergy/asthma nurse and posted about it.

http://adrenaclick.com/

Forgot to add price info. I check this on Goodrx and found the lowest in my area was Walmart and Sams for $141 (that is with a discount). Walgreens was $192 (with a coupon).

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

My province has a program called Pharmacare. It's for people who don't have their prescriptions covered by private insurance (through work). It's based on your income for the previous two years. You pay a deductible and after that, your medications are covered by the province. Our medications are also way more affordable than the US.

I see that's nice to know. Thank you for the interesting information.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Government assistance for children's health care is absolutely available in the US
It might still be costly -- I can not speak to the quality of help -- but there are government programs available. the largest national one in the US is CHIP -- Children Health Insurance Program. We also have Medicaid, which is income dependent

I see thank you!

 

[mom2rtk]

This is an IMPORTANT statement from this article:

"When we debate health care policy in America, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?"

ACA (Affordable Care Act) did absolutely nothing to address the affordability of health care. All it did was address (to a certain extent) who pays for health care. So shortsighted and shameful. I feel like everyone got hoodwinked by our government with this nonsense.

And it is so difficult to figure out how much something will cost ahead of time. DH has this procedure done on his back on a semi regular basis. One facility he went to ended up billing his insurance around $3500. Another facility for the same exact procedure was $30,000. WTH is that about. After that, he tried to find out before getting the procedure how much each facility would charge so he could factor that into his decision on where to go. None of these places could tell him ahead of time how much the procedure could cost. They do this procedure dozens of times each and every week. They couldn't even tell him how much the baseline cost would be if everything goes as planned and there are no problems or unexpected issues. How in the world do they not know how much the baseline cost is for this procedure is when they do it hundreds if not thousands of times a year? All they tell him is that they have to bill the insurance before they know how much it will cost. What kind of nonsense is that?

When the Dr. office was trying to schedule his procedure (they do this procedure at several different facilities during the week), he was asking how much it costs at each of the facilities. The person on the phone couldn't tell him. After they ended the call, this person thought they hung up but they didn't and DH heard her complaining the other people in the office about DH and his questions. She said "why do people have insurance if they aren't going to use it?". Hello!!!!! THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!!! (He never made it known that they didn't hang up. He just sat there and listened to them talking about him.)

Here is is trying to be a good steward for his company which is self-insured and he keeps getting the run around. I swear, the health care industry is a racket.

Here's something else funny. He actually had this procedure yesterday (never could find out how much it will cost. Will have to wait for the EOB for that) and they asked him which "side" they were doing. He told them that he has pain on both sides and it was never addressed to him during his office visits nor in scheduling that they would do only one side. Every other time he's had this done, it was done on both sides. The doctor said that they typically only do one side because it is time consuming to do both sides. HELLO, it takes 30 minutes to do one side and only another 20 minutes to do the other. So, it will take 20 minutes of YOUR time today (that you WILL get paid for) or it will take another 4-5 hours of MY time (as the caretaker) and a full day of DH's time (because he has to take the day off of work) to schedule another procedure to do the other side. AND he would have to deal with the effects of anesthesia AGAIN.

We both honestly believe that they wanted to do the different sides on different days so that they could bill twice for this and get more money. It's a racket I tell you.

The worst part of the ACA is that once it passed, everyone marked "fix high health care costs" off the "to do" list and moved on to the next problem to "fix".

Meanwhile, our monthly cost has skyrocketed with less and less in return. We pay more now for our high deductible plan than we did for our low deductible plan just a couple years ago. Yet we get nothing for that money now. Everything, every office call, every prescription, just goes to the deductible (with the exception of that one mandated well visit per year.)

 

[Hikergirl]

The worst part of the ACA is that once it passed, everyone marked "fix high health care costs" off the "to do" list and moved on to the next problem to "fix".

Meanwhile, our monthly cost has skyrocketed with less and less in return. We pay more now for our high deductible plan than we did for our low deductible plan just a couple years ago. Yet we get nothing for that money now. Everything, every office call, every prescription, just goes to the deductible (with the exception of that one mandated well visit per year.)

Yup, we continue to pay them month after month but don't meet our deductible so we can never take advantage of our coverage. Just WTH are we paying for? Don't answer, I know what it is, just venting........

 

[IMissEd]

My Epi-pen had expired and I went to have it refilled at the pharmacy. Even with the coupon it was still $500. I told them, "No, thanks. I'll take my chances." I take allergy shots and have asthma. If I have an attack I will just use my inhaler and go to the allergy office or ER. Speaking of which, I agree with the PP who said inhalers don't work as well since the CFCs have been removed. The medication lands in your mouth and throat instead of your lungs. Even though I have great private insurance, there are several ways that I feel like healthcare isn't as good as it once was.

 

[mom2rtk]

I am not filling my Epi script this year. Going to take my chances with bendryl gels. The price is absurd and we now have a $6,000 deductible. I miss my pre-obamacare insurance coverage.

Sadly, that's just the sort of decisions many are forced to make these days with their health care issues.