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Oh, It's Not A Racket? (Pharmacology)
The Market-Ticker ^ | May 9, 2016 | Karl Denninger

Posted on 05/09/2016 7:13:29 AM PDT by SatinDoll

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To: CodeToad

Several years ago I was in Buenos Aires working on a job and got an infection. Sore throat, fever, the works. I had a major presentation In two days. I called down to the concierge and asked what do I need to do to get a prescription for erythromycin, strongest dosage.

30 minutes later there was a knock on my door with my prescription.


61 posted on 05/09/2016 8:53:17 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (United we stand, divided we fall. I think the establishment has divided us enough.)
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To: SatinDoll

When I was going to college in Tucson in the mid 80s my dad used to have me drive down to Nogales, Mexico to buy him Atrovent inhalers for $3 retail each. These were costing him over $100 in United States with a $20 co-pay from his insurance. His out-of-pocket was one third of the co-pay in the US! After a couple years of doing this the federal government got around to making it illegal but I kept going. I got stopoed a number times by border patrol agents at the gate who looked at the inhalers, looked at me, and just gave me the nod to keep going and I got through. Not all Americans working for the government are schmucks.


62 posted on 05/09/2016 8:57:26 AM PDT by WMarshal (Trump 2016)
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To: joshua c

The cost of research is not the real cost, navigating through the bureaucratic nightmare of the FDA is. It costs anywhere from $1 billion to $5 billion to get a major drug approved, and only 1 in 3 makes it. The other major cost is when lawyers sue for side effects “caused by the drug”. No drug is side effect free. Thanks to the “I won the lottery”attitude of plaintiffs, somebody has to pay the cost.


63 posted on 05/09/2016 9:00:57 AM PDT by anoldafvet (they're not immigrants, they're criminal aliens)
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To: joshua c

Thank you! This truth does not get stated often enough.
We are subsidizing the price controls imposed by other countries.
For many of our drugs there is no good reason why they cannot be over the counter. Nobody is going to abuse insulin.


64 posted on 05/09/2016 9:18:29 AM PDT by Wiser now (Socialism does not eliminate poverty, it guarantees it.)
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To: FatherofFive

To the tune of 500 million per compound. That doesnt include compounds that dont make it through.


65 posted on 05/09/2016 9:22:33 AM PDT by phs3 (FUBO)
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To: SatinDoll
My son too is a diabetic. He walks into a Walmart w/o a Rx and they charge him $25.00 at the pharmacy for humalog. No insurance involved.

???? I'm confused.

66 posted on 05/09/2016 9:28:41 AM PDT by servantboy777
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To: SatinDoll

Same thing occurs or used to occur along the Texas border towns. I don’t know if it is
still the case. I’ve known people that would go there once every three months and get their
scripts filled. You could get a prescription written there if you didn’t have one with you.


67 posted on 05/09/2016 9:33:58 AM PDT by deport
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To: joshua c
We could go to price controls too but all the drug research would dry up. No new drug discoveries.

The drug companies could double their R&D budgets with what they spend on advertising alone.

We're being scammed by everyone in the supply chain except the doctors and pharmacists- the drug companies, their reps, the insurance companies, etc.

My wife needed a prescription refill in Europe and it was the same situation: $80-$90 a bottle here, paid 8 Euros for the same medicine in Athens. I have a friend who has dual citizenship in Europe-- his general rule of thumb is that the same medicine or medical procedure here is available for about 1/10 the cost in Europe.

If you use a hospital pharmacy, you're being robbed even more as they mark everything up 2 to 3 times the already outrageous price in a regular pharmacy.

In any other industry, they would be indicted for fraud.

If I get in an accident with my car, I get an estimate and I know right away how much my insurance will pay and how much I will be out of pocket. If I go to a hospital in the US, I never know whether I'll leave bankrupt, even with $1200 a month medical insurance.

Trump is right when he pushes for a national insurance pool like Germany's. But if we have a national insurance pool like Germany's (with a reformed disability insurance system like theirs), we don't need malpractice lawsuits, because there's no social utility in it. If you're injured by a medical procedure, you're still covered. If the procedure is genuine malpractice (as found be a medical review board), then the practitioner needs to have their license or privileges yanked. And we don't need to pay some land shark 33% of the disability and medical payments.

68 posted on 05/09/2016 9:41:14 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens")
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To: alicewonders
Or, people would just stop going to a doctor until the catastrophic insurance kicked in because they collapsed with cancer or some other untreated condition.

Be careful what you wish for.

69 posted on 05/09/2016 9:43:32 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens")
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To: Toddsterpatriot

We pay for research and development. Plus the welfare state. And on top of that via legislation we the tax payers pay for the lobbyist donor pacs that buy politicians.


70 posted on 05/09/2016 9:47:46 AM PDT by Just mythoughts (Jesus said Luke 17:32 Remember Lot's wife.)
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To: sheana
I had a stent put in a few years ago. The hospital sent a copy of the "rack rate" bill without the doctor's charges, just the cath lab and the overnight in the ICU.

I laughed out loud when I read it: $36,000.

Ludicrous.

71 posted on 05/09/2016 9:48:14 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens")
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To: Just mythoughts
We pay for research and development.

Why does that stop the drug companies from charging the same, or more, for overseas drug sales?

72 posted on 05/09/2016 9:55:58 AM PDT by Toddsterpatriot ("Telling the government to lower trade barriers to zero...is government interference" central_va)
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To: marktwain
Food is much, much more expensive in Europe than it is in the United States.

Maybe-- I was just in a supermarket in the Netherlands a few weeks ago: meat prices were about the same (high). Prices for other foods like milk, cheese and bread seemed about the same or much less for higher quality goods.

Europeans walk (or bike) much more than Americans, although compared to 25 years ago (the last time I was there), the lard-bottom effect of too much time at a computer is beginning to show up (especially among the young) in both Holland and Germany.

If you break the demographics down, US healthcare is about the same quality except for advanced cancer treatment, where we are clearly much better.

73 posted on 05/09/2016 9:56:07 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens")
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To: Toddsterpatriot
It does not stop them. Presently the US is the cash cow. But with all our illegals and other homegrown welfare recipients the cash flow is tightening. Less people buying (’forced’) to buy insurance, means less money trees to tap into. At some point big pharma will reach the end of research and development. The world becomes one, which means the majority are attached to the system. Little blue pills for grandma, instead of a surgical procedure. Gotta control that population problem.
74 posted on 05/09/2016 10:05:24 AM PDT by Just mythoughts (Jesus said Luke 17:32 Remember Lot's wife.)
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To: Just mythoughts
It does not stop them.

Why sell for less?

75 posted on 05/09/2016 10:09:28 AM PDT by Toddsterpatriot ("Telling the government to lower trade barriers to zero...is government interference" central_va)
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To: stanne

And for most of those 5000 years, life expectancy was about 40 years. Infant and child mortality was huge, the average woman had about 13 pregnancies in her lifetime, and two or three of those babies born lived to be adults. Drugs are a good thing, not evil!


76 posted on 05/09/2016 10:20:38 AM PDT by erkelly
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To: pierrem15

“Or, people would just stop going to a doctor until the catastrophic insurance kicked in because they collapsed with cancer or some other untreated condition.
Be careful what you wish for.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it would make healthcare costs more competitive because people would be smarter consumers if they have to make such decisions themselves. Competition would drive prices down on lots of things. Right now - you have expensive Obamacare monthly costs - and sometimes up to a $6000 deductible - you can barely afford the COST of having to have insurance that covers every little thing and has to include existing conditions at the same cost to everybody.

That’s money you have to spend just to have the insurance to cover most of your healthcare costs. I submit that on non-catastrophic healthcare - it would cost you less to pay with HSA funds and out-of-pocket, than you’re paying just to have the coverage for it, with an insurance company being the middle man and government crony.


77 posted on 05/09/2016 10:21:10 AM PDT by alicewonders
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To: Toddsterpatriot
Why sell for less?

Why not, if your profits are already guaranteed? Few nations around this world have the kind of regulations for so called quality control than we do. Patents also play a part in the cost of meds... There is advertising costs, and buying politician costs.. NOT all costs are specifically related to research and development. Plus in socialized nations they have a monetary amount set aside for the majority to cover the cost of meds.

78 posted on 05/09/2016 10:26:28 AM PDT by Just mythoughts (Jesus said Luke 17:32 Remember Lot's wife.)
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To: SatinDoll
My BIL, an oncologist in the metro Detroit area had to leave the private medical group he shared with other doctors because he was losing too much money on the chemo drugs he had to administer to his patients. The purchase cost to him was greater than what medicare and medicaid were reimbursing him.....

He had to become a staff doctor with the hospital his group was affiliated with.

79 posted on 05/09/2016 10:35:15 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco (#HillaryForPrison-2016)
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To: joshua c
the US CITIZENS subsidize everything....

the illegals come here to the US because we've subsidized all their health care already and all their social security demands and we wonder why they come here....its FREE to them....

insulin is cheap in Europe because we've already PAID for it here...

IOWS, we have been shafted not once, but twice....we paid for the infrastructure and now we pay the most for what that infrastructure produces...

ain't life grand?

80 posted on 05/09/2016 10:43:42 AM PDT by cherry
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