Posted on 05/09/2016 7:13:29 AM PDT by SatinDoll
Oh yes it is.
"My parents were just vacationing in Europe (they go often so they're aware of how stuff works). My mom is diabetic and had a shortage of insulin while in France, they went to the drugstore and she showed the bottle of Humalog which is what she uses in the United States and the price in the United States is around $240 a bottle which is charged to her Medicare and insurance and can only be prescribed by her doctor."
"The pharmacist recognized the bottle and without having to go to a doctor sold her a bottle of insulin for US $25.00."
"This is the same brand made by Eli Lilly that she gets in the United States and why in the in the world that should be 1/10 of the price without having to go to the doctor for a prescription."
[Quoted with permission.]
Note this well folks: No prescription needed and 1/10th the price for the exact same drug.
Now fill your suitcase and bring same home with you and you'll go to prison. Note that you're not counterfeiting anything, you're not adulterating anything and you lawfully own that which you're bringing into the country for the purpose of nothing other than making a profit.
If this price-fixing, which is supposed to be a felony under 15 USC was to be stopped then the drug would cost $25/bottle -- or slightly more, since of course the person bringing it would like to make a profit -- here.
Even with a reasonable profit -- say, $5/bottle -- it would still collapse the price in the United States instantly.
Is it all drugs? No, definitely not, but the same issue applies to both procedures and supplies.
Put a stop to the racket and the cost of obtaining medical care, whether it be drug, device, service or procedure will drop like a stone. Further, no new laws are actually necessary since between 15 USC and state consumer protection laws are plenty-sufficient on their own. The entire rubric of "must buy insurance or be bankrupted by any material medical emergency" certainly fits the definition of a force-tied sale that also facially appears to be unlawful under that very same body of law.
You have been and are today being robbed with the explicit cooperation and assistance of the Federal and State governments folks. If it is not stopped now these practices will, within the next few years, consume the entirety of the Federal Budget at which point our economy and probability political system will collapse.
PS: I was a “lab rat” for Rx studies years ago because of needing extra $. It opened my eyes to more of the bs of our medical/pharma business boom in recent decades.
Studies are so manipulated. You get kicked out if your results are not looking like they will match up with the desired results, was what I experienced.
A monthly generic prescription I was taking in 2003 cost me out-of-pocket $19/month.
As soon as the Medicare Prescription Drugs Act passed, the next monthly precription refill jumped to $29/month.
I was not even on Medicare at the time.
No - it would not.
The Pharmaceutical industry spends more money on marketing and lobbying that they do on research.
Under the current system, it is more profitable to rent politicians than to invest in developing new products. That is what must change.
The last thing people think of with obamacare is big pharma
What drives up the cost of medical care is big pharma People are duped.
“It is not expensive to manufacture a pill. The research is the real cost.”
Much of that cost is regulatory requirements.
It’s more like France isn’t shouldering the costs of the US’s ludicrously expensive legal environment, nor paying the salaries of the US’s pharmacological lobby
That’s a rod you guys have made for yourselves.
Insulin is one of the big ones but one of my blood pressure medications is almost fifteen times more expensive here than in Thailand. Everything my wife and I are prescribed are less expensive there than here. I understand there are some drugs that are very difficult to get there but we haven’t had a problem. Lantus insulin was “very expensive” according to the druggist there — $50 US compared to several hundred dollars here.
The same goes for hospital care and procedures. It is scandalous.
Not one thought about what it takes to go from a research drug to one dispensable and the costs involved? Trials, tests, proofs, actuarial studies, government oversight. Congress and government oversight? Not one? All just big pharma? Those bastards! They killed Kenny!
“The US is subsidizing all the single payer countries.”
The Uniparty willingly supports the gouging of US citizens in exchange for contributions.
That money is a amen from our pockets by force.
“Government paid health care hurts more people than it helps.”
And yet the US has worse healthcare as measured by health and longevity and especially cost than those socialist countries.
In any given long term care facility you have the culmination of the prevalence of the dependence on drugs in this country
People with lists of fifteen to twenty diagnoses, most from lifelong abuse of their bodies. Not a thought to proper nutrition, exercise, sleep, proper leisure activities, work environment, eating habits and environment, a lot of “give me a pill or perform surgery and fix it.”
Now, worse than ever, no one is home to cook a proper meal, forget paying attention to feeding and care, getting kids outside to play, having food ready for the breadwinners to come home to, providing some kind of joy necessary for good health.
Research?
Five thousand years of knowledge of the above basics of health mean nothing to a drug-dependent, pharmaceutical worshipping duped populace. Idiots. Hillary adoring Obama worshipping suckers.
Pharmacology is the study of drugs.
ology means "the study of."
It has NOTHING to do with the selling of drugs.
Pharmacologists study drugs is laboratories, with microscopes, making use of chemistry and other sciences.
They also study the EFFECT drugs have.
Karl Denninger should correct his stupidity before he embarrasses himself again.
I wish I could afford to vacation often to a place like Europe. My parents couldn’t afford to vacation on any trip requiring a plane trip or a week’s stay in a hotel. I really feel for the hardships these European travelers face.
Don’t forget the get rich quick lawfare against all things medical as advertised on TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, internet and billboard here in America.
The problem is that we allow the single-payer countries to negotiate a better price with drug companies, while that doesn’t happen here. This could easily be fixed by not allowing foreigners to get a given drug for less than the price that U.S. consumers get the same drug.
The US provides about 95% of the pharmaceutical research on the planet, and we end up paying many times what foreigners do - time to stop that, time to level the playing field, time to stop subsidizing wealthy Western countries (with drugs as well as the military) - let them pay their fair share!
Not to mention the forced vaccinations.
Children in the US have an incredible number of vaccination events compared with children in other first world countries.
In 2011 the Supreme Court shielded drug companies from all liability for harm caused by vaccines mandated by government. If they’re mandatory you have no recourse. Got to wonder why that is.
But his attack on USA drug prices and Big Pharma is deliberately deceptive.
At least 50% of the international research done on medical drugs is paid for by private USA companies.
If there is no profit incentive, there will be no private research, especially since most new drugs do not get approved.
Is Denninger recommending that we turn 100% of pharmaceutical research over to government?
I'm sure that will work out well!
I bought insulin here for around $40 without a prescription at a Walmart pharmacy 3 years ago.
The socialized medicine countries that have no respect for intellectual property laws blackmail the pharmaceutical companies into allowing their meds to be sold in those countries at loss prices. If they don't play ball, the countries just allow their counterfeiters to produce and sell the drugs instead.
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