Free Republic

Although Generic Drugs have been considered a cheap alternative to brand drugs, the recent price increase has triggered a Senate investigation. Several low-price drug manufactures were questioned by members of the Congress in October, about the changes that have happened in the last 18 months, in terms of price. The Congress meeting happened as a result of several price complaints from long patients as well as pharmacists and physicians. Some of the low-cost generic drugs’ prices have risen with up to 8,000%. The huge increase was investigated at a Senate hearing, on Thursday. It was reported that three pharmaceutical companies...

Gilead Sciences’ new hepatitis C drug receives as much praise for its healing powers as it receives criticism of its price, $84,000 for 12 weeks. Those parallel storylines played out even further in a prominent scientific journal’s latest edition, published online over the weekend.

Under the rules that took effect in May, hospice patients or their families could not fill prescriptions through their Part D drug plans until first confirming that the prescriptions were not covered by hospice providers. Drugs related to palliative and comfort care are supposed to be covered under the fixed rate payments to the hospice. Medicare announced Friday that the rules would be revised so that the additional authorization would be required for only four types of medications: pain relievers, anti-nauseants, laxatives, and anti-anxiety drugs that are “nearly always” considered hospice-related.

The Obama administration on Friday backed down on restrictions of private insurance coverage for hospice drugs under Medicare, saying the regulations were preventing some terminally ill patients from having access to medicine. Under Medicare's Part A hospital program, hospices receive daily payments for each patient but are responsible for all drugs related to a patient's terminal illness. Medicare Part D covers only prescriptions and medications for curative conditions that are unrelated to a terminal illness.

Obamacare’s emphasis on cost-benefit has apparently granted permission for the medical technocrats to conjure all kinds of healthcare rationing schemes.And the Medical Establishment is apparently playing along. From, “The Cancer Death-Panel App,” by Robert Goldberg in the NY Post: The latest innovation in cancer care isn’t a medical breakthrough but an app to ration new drugs. It’ll measure care in terms of what it costs health plans, instead of what it means for patients’ lives.That it’s being developed under the auspices of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, the world’s leading oncology association, is a grim warning about...

HIV infections are rising among gay men in many parts of the world, the World Health Organization warned Friday, urging all men who have sex with men to take antiretroviral drugs to prevent infection. "We are seeing exploding epidemics," warned Gottfried Hirnschall, who heads WHO's HIV department. Infection rates are rising again among men who have sex with men -- the group at the epicentre of AIDS pandemic when it first emerged 33 years ago, he told reporters in Geneva. While images of skeletal men dying of AIDS in the 1980s pushed the world to act, a younger generation that...

Hospitals across the country are struggling to deal with a shortage of one of their essential medical supplies. Manufacturers are rationing saline — a product used all over the hospital to clean wounds, mix medications and treat dehydration. Now drug companies say they won’t be able to catch up with demand until next year. ...“The Most Expensive Drug Shortage in History” The burden ultimately falls on hospitals, clinics, and dialysis centers to come up with their own workarounds. And all that staff time adds up. Hospitals spend $216 million a year on the labor costs of managing drug shortages, according...

Drug therapy is growing more complex and costly! So-called specialty drugs are gradually displacing traditional drugs as the primary component of drug spending. The market is expanding rapidly. Only about 10 such drugs were available 20 years ago but today there are more than 300. These drugs typically treat medical conditions that are life-threatening, chronic and often rare. Cancer treatments are the most common type of specialty drugs, making up one-third of total. Drugs for autoimmune disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn's disease, medications for HIV and drugs for multiple sclerosis are responsible for another third of specialty drug spending....

This is a re-post of an article I wrote in 2012.  I am re-posting it to demonstrate that recent stories about doctor shortages and wait times are absolutely inevitable results of government interventions in the health care economy.My son is in Freshman econ 101, and so I have been posting him some supply and demand curve examples.  Here is one for health care.  The question at hand:  Does government regulation including Obamacare increase access to health care?  Certainly it increases access to health care insurance, but does it increase access to actual doctors?   We will look at three major...

A new study commissioned by PhRMA finds that many consumers in ObamaCare’s insurance exchanges could end up paying more than twice as much in out-of-pocket drug costs. The report for the nation’s top drug lobby was conducted by actuarial firm Milliman, which found that people on the Silver Plan, the most popular ObamaCare plan, would likely pay 130 percent more for out-of-pocket prescription drugs compared to people on similar employer-sponsored plans. One reason why out-of-pocket costs are likely to be higher is because employer plans are more generous than typical Silver Plans, according to the report. However, the numbers don’t...

With enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges now closed, Democrats and their friends in the media are ebullient. Obamacare is an enormous success, they say, and conservatives have been humiliated. On closer inspection, however, things seem decidedly less bullish for President Obama’s signature achievement. Among the many exaggerations and inaccuracies the law’s defenders are touting, five stand out. • First, they say that premium rates are down. In support of this, liberals cite research from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), but they misinterpret it. In fact, the CBO’s most recent estimate of premiums shows a decline not from what they were...

A new report finds that Obamacare customers are in for sticker shock because, unlike many employer-sponsored insurance plans, the fine print in many Obamacare policies requires patients to meet their deductible before lower-cost prescription drug co-pays kick in. That means hefty out-of-pocket expenses for Obamacare plan holders, especially since Obamacare deductibles are "relatively high" as compared to employer-sponsored insurance plans. The report, which was conducted by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and Breakaway Policy, concludes that even Obamacare customers who receive taxpayer-funded subsidies will "find it difficult to afford the amounts they will have to pay out-of-pocket before their Exchange...

I was with my brother when he was refilling his prescriptions today. Cost of 3 month supply of Fenofibrate at Walgreen's was $400. He's been told that's a bargain for medicare patients. $400 for 3 month supply of a generic drug?

A couple years ago doc put us on Crestor for cholesterol...the prescription price via insurance was $30 for a month's supply. Just got my first refill for the new year. $180. Thanks, Obamugabe.

Generic drugs now account for well over 80% of all prescriptions. Just 10 years ago, less than half of drugs sold were generics. Much of the growth is because employers make generics extra-affordable through mail order programs (pharmacy benefits managers). Then you also have the grocery stores and big box retailers who do $4 generics. Meanwhile, a lot of breakthrough drugs that were patent protected are no longer so and are now selling as generics. But what you don't know about the pricing of generics can hurt your wallet. The big pharmacy chains discount generics 30% from the brand name...

A coalition of 31 HIV/AIDS organizations is urging the Obama administration to investigate whether some health insurers are trying to discourage HIV-infected patients from enrolling in new policies being sold under the health-care law, a move the groups say could be illegal. The Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination against people who are sick; insurers can't deny them coverage or charge them more than healthier peers. But in a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius last week, the coalition said it had noticed "a number of disturbing trends" in plans on the insurance exchanges, including plans that...

In the latest in the Paper of Record’s recent series on their gradually creeping realization that There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: ObamaCare Edition, the NYT has a story out this morning that hones in on the Obama administration’s desire to tout premiums that sound as gloriously low as is humanly possible — even if that means deliberately obfuscating the ways in which insurance companies are now looking to make up the increased costs of the overhaul in other, less immediately obvious areas. The Obama administration will herald what appear to be “affordable” premiums available to so...

If you like your medicines, you may not be able to keep them under Obamacare. The President famously promised that you could keep your health plan and doctor. For many people, both of those pledges are turning out not to be true. And now, you might not be able to keep your drugs, either. There are two reasons why. The first issue has to do with the higher out of pocket costs patients will face. The second issue may be far more severe. Simply put, many drugs may not be covered at all, and the costs patients incur by buying...

Americans with chronic illnesses—who are expected to be among the biggest beneficiaries of the health law—face widely varying out-of-pocket drug costs that could be obscured on the new insurance exchanges. Under the law, patients can’t be denied coverage due to existing conditions or charged higher rates than healthier peers. The law also sets an annual out-of-pocket maximum of up to $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for families, after which insurers pay the full tab. But depending on the coverage they select, some patients on expensive drug regimens could reach that level fast.

At times it seems like the sheer magnitude of bad news about ObamaCare can redound to its own benefit. It’s easy for individual pieces of bad news to get lost in the sea of failure that has characterized the Obama administration’s signature “achievement.” That might be the case with the most important story to appear about ObamaCare this week, from Tuesday’s edition of the New York Times. The paper reported that the Obama administration has ruled that the federal health-care program be exempted from the category of laws considered “federal health care programs.” Now, this is obviously dishonest: the federal...