Posted on 07/24/2017 8:13:57 PM PDT by NGC 6822
PARASITES IN US HEALTH CARE In early May my wife and I returned from a short vacation in Peru. Two weeks later I came down with severe diarrhea that has now continued unabated for six weeks. The cause has been identified as a parasite—Blastasytis Species.
This parasite is believed to be present in 23% of the American population and 100% of people in “less developed countries” (Wikipedia). Albendazole is the first line of treatment for this infection.
Albendazole tablets are sold throughout the world (outside of the US) for 1 penny to six cents each and are usually available as a non-prescription drug in any pharmacy. Inside the US the same pill is sold for $219 each (Wikipedia). After Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) approved their share of the cost, I was obliged to write a check for $649 to cover my co-pay for a 3-day supply of 12 pills, i.e. 4 pills per day. This is an experiment with no guarantee that it will be successful.
This medication has been in existence for 45 years. It is a generic medicine with an estimated one billion pills currently on the world market. However, Amenda Pharma (google it) has bought the US distribution rights, and thus they now monopolize the domestic market.
Ignoring parasites currently dining on the inside of my body, I am forced to ask myself the question, “Who are the parasites in the US Health Care System?” Is it the Trial Lawyers Assoc. or the American Medical Assoc. (AMA)? Is it the drug manufactures, or the distributers, or the insurance companies, or the politicians? Maybe the parasites are among the people themselves—the fraudulent claimers.
All I know is that I and my insurer had to pay up to 21,900 times more for pills here in the US than the amount an uninsured peasant pays for the same off-the-shelf medication in the rest of the world!
And please, no offense to the peasants—since I may become one of them soon.
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
“This is a very old generic that one company has a monopoly on in the Untied States.”
If generic anyone can make it. How there be a monopoly?
Very well said. Thank You.
If anyone else reads this post, I will take this opportunity to encourage you to forward it to your Senator or Representative.
I am sending it to mine.
And I am very thankful for your interest and participation in this thread.
I was making a point I think you understood.
$650 is a bargain.
Can anybody tell me why it is a secret? Sure seems like subterfuge to me. So much for a competitive system.
We complain because we know these costs are not right and because complain is all we can do. We can’t pay the crooked politicians enough to act on our behalf as they should. Big pharma, big medicine pay them well with our money.
We know the prices those of who do pay are billed are not right.
I had a project once that used solenoid valves for a hydraulic system. The coils in them burned out frequently and each replacement from the vendor was the price of a new Surburban. The valves were not made by the vendor. The vendor only specified, stocked and sold the valves to us. Eventually I figured out what they were and bought one on Ebay for 200 bucks. I took it to the vendor next time we needed one and told them to use mine. Of course they asked where I got it and I told them, “Ebay for 200 bucks.” then I asked if they wanted to talk about their prices.
We should be able to do the same thing by buying drugs from overseas.
” We have a bizarre system. The only suggestions I’ve seen so far in this thread are can be summed up as “try and buy it under the table from Mexico or Canada.” Its a sad sign of how beaten-down Americans already are to accept such a system.”
Prices are low in other countries because those countries are socialist.
Also they are charity cases, did you not see that the manufacturer gave away a billion doses for free?
Here few people have the disease and those that do can afford the cost.
Anyone in this country can manufacture the drug and sell it cheaper.
Do it if you think you can make money doing it.
Nor you from being dumb, ignorant and leftist.
Very good question...some Freepers need to go out and start manufacturing Albendazole...it is off patent and “exclusivity”. Also “distribution contracts” don’t limit generic competition, they just specify how one drug companies’ product gets distributed and sold.
https://www.drugs.com/availability/generic-albenza.html
“I have noticed time and again that the majority of posters here on FR do NOT have any kind of sympathy for those less fortunate.”
How does that apply to this issue?
No, you look. You wasted your ammunition on the wrong guy.
I think the smarmy little chit that is buying up generic rights to drugs and epipens and such then raping people over the prices should be strung up by his balls. People like this are EXACTLY the reason medicine can’t be a for profit pure free enterprise proposition because it can become and has become a monopoly. Self-government without self-control will not work.
I guess you can’t detect cynicism and sarcasm. Just for the record, there is none of either in this post.
To answer your question: The INVENTION RIGHTS ran out a long time ago. That’s why it is generic.
But, the DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS in America is a legal trick that the lawyers (and legislators) constructed to throw a very lucrative bone to this company.
I don’t know enough to understand exactly how they did this. But, I have been guessing that the FDA with their power, rules and regulations have some how made this possible. A post above came very close to touching on the explanation. Someone in the past administration may have tried to set-up a backdoor tax on the American people to subsidize poor countries in the world through the UN. Or alternatively, some legislators got a kick back. Or alternatively again, the distribution company just has some VERY GOOD LAWYERS to benefit the company exclusively.
Sell your shinola to some fool pal. You’ve had too much koolaid already.
The “Albenza” brand name drug has “distribution rights” contracts with their distributers...generic Albendazole has no such contracts. Anyone can manufacture and distribute it if they wanted to. (Like Glaxo-SK did with the million doses for 3rd world countries). See my post #48.
Thank you for your post because it capsulizes the wider issue that is at the center of the political debate raging in this country.
I totally agree with you that the chit (as you put it) should be strung up by the balls. (PS: we’re bordering on being thrown off for language , here.)
But, I adamantly disagree with your solution of terminating the profit motive of the free market. Ok, you want to take away the profits of the distributors. So, will you then take away the profits of the insurance companies, and the profits of the drug manufacturers, and the profits of the hospitals and the research facilities, and the doctors.
No doubt, this all sounds pretty good to you. But, you are then left with only one solution, and that is to let the government own everything. But if the government owns everything, you end up back at square 1 again, because I believe it was exactly the government that allowed this company to perpetrate their atrocity on us. It was the government that allowed a critical monopoly to be established. It was the government that snuffed out the free market mechanism of COMPETITION that is very effective at balancing out gross inequities.
The government can do some very good things to promote a good, healthy competitive atmosphere. But the government can also do some very bad things that result in the worst kind of tyranny that you can ever imagine. And many politicians will be absolutely delighted to participate in that tyranny because they can become extremely rich.
Just makin' friends wherever you go, huh?
We don’t have a free market and we don’t have government that does anything for us. We have what amounts to a mess of a system with lobbyists for corporations in collusion with politicians not being accountable to the sheeple.
Dare I remind you that BCBS was originally intended to be not for profit and for catastrophic care by the Truman administration? I also remind you that we didn’t talk about medical costs in the 50s and 60s much because there was little or no for profit medicine outside of the doctors practice. Hospitals were mostly not for profit. That all changed about 30 years ago and nobody even noticed.
Even with adjustment for huge amounts of inflation medical costs 50 years ago were a fraction of what they are now. Why? Profit, tort, technology (some that isn’t even that useful and just has to be paid for), regulation, administration, more freeloaders, inefficiency, sloppiness and slothfulness to name a few.
We are not solving anything and we will not
I liked your post, and you make some good points. But I need to respectfully correct something for the benefit of other readers.
You actually, can buy this Albendazole in powder form, but it is still very expensive. Sorry, I don’t have the exact price.
Anyway, suppose you bought a few thousand pounds of the powder, and you bought a machine to turn powder into pills. We all understand that in the most entrepreneurial country in the world, the task of turning powder into pills is not a very difficult job. However, the second you take your pills over to CVS or Walgreen to sell, the FDA will be knocking on your door with an arrest warrant and you will be spending as many years in prison as I will hosting these parasites. ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION1
“I think the smarmy little chit that is buying up generic rights to drugs and epipens and such then raping people over the prices should be strung up by his balls.”
https://www.mdm.com/2015-top-pharmaceuticals-distributors
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3462660/posts?page=39#39
Contact the “Canadian Pharmacy.”
They email me every couple days with ads for deep discount Viagra.
For some reason, their email and billing address is in Russia.
Your bitterness knows no bounds
It is even greater than your ignorance
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