In fairness, if you have GREAT insurance then your copay is probably around $100 for a tier 4 drug... or perhaps it's your seperate $500 medications copay... or at the very least, it's your $6,000 OOP max which you run through in short order and likely for the entire family. The $3,100 price tag may be the 'negotiated' price... which only means that the uninsured price is even higher.

I can't really speak to pharma... it's a chicken or egg proposal as far as I'm concerned. Do you eliminate the profit motive which stifles innovation? I have a hard time with that. The part I don't have a problem with is allowing new patents for 'old' drugs in a new combination... i.e. many 'new' drugs are merely single pill versions of old combinations... or there is an injectable out there now with a smaller needle and fewer 'buffers' (things that have impact on delivery, but not care) but the same medicine... and they get to charge 'new drug' prices for it. That should stop. That's innovation that's worth maybe a few bucks.

As for healthcare itself, it's an issue set up by the 'must care' mandate. You get charges $2,000 to spend 5 minutes in the ER for the sniffles because of all the resources that they MUST make available to you (including staffing ratios) even if you don't want or need them.... and that's your share of the overhead cost. Of course they also know that many won't pay it... and they also know that SOME people can afford it.... even if it's not fair... so it's part of the same 'cost shifting' that the government does through taxes, being compounded in real time.

(06-29-2020 12:29 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  ...and guess what our highly paid doctors will prescribe instead of the cheaper Hydrox...? It's a well oiled machine between the doctors and pharma. Those two could teach Mexican police in how to bribe. It's a little like Bite'ems Quid Pro Quo.

Come on now. I’m sure none of these physicians have purchased any of their stock....

Well apparently the U.S. Government just bought up the entire stock of remdesivir which effectively means no other country in the world can find it until at least October or so.

Hopefully we got the CostCo bulk discount (although to be honest, I'm not sure if CostCo's 'discounts' are any good either, but perhaps that should be the subject of another thread).

Supply and demand

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(06-30-2020 12:11 PM)SoMs Eagle Wrote:  

(06-29-2020 12:29 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  ...and guess what our highly paid doctors will prescribe instead of the cheaper Hydrox...? It's a well oiled machine between the doctors and pharma. Those two could teach Mexican police in how to bribe. It's a little like Bite'ems Quid Pro Quo.

Come on now. I’m sure none of these physicians have purchased any of their stock....

Can anyone confirm or deny the story that Dr. Fauci owns a financial stake in remdesivir?

Nothing sinister about that, per se. If he was involved in the development of the drug, then he would almost certainly have some kind of percentage. That's the way those deals get done. But it call into question some of his recommendations.