Yesterday I visited a doctor and got some prescriptions. One of those (at my request) was a simple tetracycline anti-biotic. These kinds of drugs have been around in generic versions for decades. I figured I'd pay about 10 bucks for a standard two-week course.
The drugstore I use didn't even have it in stock and quoted me a price — $400. An alternative doxycycline would cost me $175. I went to another pharmacy and asked them did they have tetracycline in stock? What would it cost me? The guy quoted me a price — $11.79. He told me to come back in half an hour while they transferred the prescription and got it ready.
A half hour later, I went back and when the guy rang it up, the real price came up — $428. There was a conference at the pharmacy and much confusion. Four people working there came over to explain to me that the price was the price. I also found out that the doxycycline alternative would cost me $295. I have medical insurance, but it doesn't cover drugs.
Needless to say, I didn't get the drug I had requested yesterday.
A search of the internet turned up this article, which is from 2013.
When a drug costs 30 times what it once
Diane Shattuck filled a prescription in December for a generic antibiotic called doxycycline. With insurance, she paid $4.30 for 60 pills at a CVS store in Orange.
She returned at the end of February to refill her prescription. This time, she was told her cost for the drug would be about $165.
"It was bizarre," Shattuck, 73, told me. "And no one at CVS could explain why the price was so high." Unfortunately, I won't be able to offer a clear-cut answer, either. But my effort to untangle Shattuck's situation cast a harsh light on the shadowy world of drug pricing. It revealed that different manufacturers can charge wildly different prices for what is essentially the same generic medicine, and that drugstores can rake in unconscionable profits by passing along marked-up meds to customers without the slightest explanation.
"It's a very murky world," said Jeffrey McCombs, a professor of pharmaceutical economics and policy at USC. "All you can say for sure is that the price being charged has nothing to do with the actual cost of producing the generic."
There's been a lot of buzz lately about insane healthcare charges. Time magazine carried an extraordinary article by Steven Brill recently highlighting the arbitrariness of many hospital prices...
Follow the link to read the rest. This Wall Street Journal article provides details on the tetracyline situation. Apparently there were ongoing shortages as of 2014. Obviously the "market" is still failing us as of April, 2016.
A new analysis finds that half of all generic drugs sold through retailers became more expensive over the past 12 months. In fact, the prices paid by pharmacies more than doubled for one out of 11 generics. And in a few cases – notably, the tetracycline antibiotic and the captopril blood pressure pill – the cost increases not only exceeded 1,000%, but topped 17,000%…. Yes, 17,000%...
“This is widespread,” Fein tells us. “This is not an isolated incident concerning a few drugs affecting just some patients. It’s an industry-wide phenomenon and it’s not only going to become big enough to move the needle on the earnings reports for some companies, it’s a national health care issue. Because if [increases continue], it’s going to touch every one of us.”
It certainly touched me yesterday. Again, it is needless to say that the supply of basic drugs like tetracycline should not be subject to the vagaries of a "free" market. It is patently obvious that the pharmaceuticals industry is entirely rigged and corrupt, and that has been patently obvious for a long time now.
The stuff I say on DOTE is often abstract, but the consequences of the world we observe are all around us, affecting us even when we don't know it (yet).
That stuff matters.
Fun fact: as a vet tech I can tell you that 100mg doxy capsules cost us approximately 20 cents a cap.
Posted by: T.J. | 04/14/2016 at 12:30 PM