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What you say simply can’t be true. The United States has the best health care system in the world.

NIfster seems to have all the answers about why titanium screws are justifiably priced at $242 each so maybe he has an answer about why this simple but necessary medicine needs to cost 21,000 times more in the United States than anywhere else. I”m confident there will be some excuse. I’ve included him on this post to let him weigh in.

It can’t possibly be because people in medicine and business in this country are money grubbing sorry bastards who only care about profit.

Signed,
Hotshot

Look, I take your point. In fact I posted above somewhere that there are GOOD AND BAD people in these various institutions. In fact, I absolutely support a pharmaceutical research company that spends years and supports top researchers to discover drugs for exotic diseases. And they are absolutely justified in charging high prices to try to recover their costs. That is why most of these miracle drugs come out of America and not out of most other places in the world.

But the Albedazole is a different thing. It has been around for 45 years. It is a generic drug. It is sold for pennies everywhere outside of America. If it were only a few dollars in this country, it would be tolerable. But $219 dollars is not defensible.

Furthermore, the company, Amenda Pharma has been bought out by another company (google it), and that company is going around the country buying DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS for other generic drugs and blowing out the prices. Neither political party is doing anything concrete about it. You like capitalism? ME TOO!
All I ask is that we allow the bedrock of capitalism to be unleashed—FREE COMPETITION! I think you will agree.

Wow, that’s pretty harsh considering that hospitals are operating on about a 1/2 of 1% net profit margin, medical products at about 9%, and even the “money grubbing” drug companies at about 14-15% margins. Contrast with banks at 24%, cable TV at 12%, and railroads at 18%. Hospitals are making 1/3 of retail grocers, and that industry is known for “slim margins”.

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html