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You can already buy the drug for about $15 per pack.

The problem is that under government regulations, Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies have no incentive to provide you with the low cost version of the drug.

Imbruvica is priced at about US$12,000-13,000 for a month's supply (typically dosed as 420 mg daily for leukemias and related diseases, taken as 140 mg cap x 3 at a time once daily until either it or the disease kills you). If you RTFA, you'll find that's $133 a pill. They're going to introduce 3 new tablet sizes —280 mg, 420 mg, and 560 mg, and charge US$400 for each of them, no matter how many mg are in it. Once that's done, they'll make the old 140 mg capsule unavailable.

So some physicians did a trial last year that found 140 mg a day actually works as well as 420 mg for certain cancers. This, however, would cut into profits by 66%, so instead you can get a new 140 mg tablet for $400 instead of the old 140 mg capsule for $133. See, the pharmaceutical companies do understand math: you pay for treatment of the disease, not for the amount of medicine, and if it turns out you can be treated for a disease for a third of the price, they can just raise the price.

Or I suppose you could split the new 420 mg tablet into 3 pieces (carefully!) and pay the same price as before, or quarter the new 560's and get a modest discount. Cancer patients love gambling with a pill splitter for their $12k/month meds! As the drug company puts it, this is "a new innovation to provide patients with a convenient one pill, once-a-day dosing regimen and improved packaging, with the intent to improve adherence to this important therapy.”

So, that's believable - they are increasing the price of the old capsule by discontinuing it and replacing it with one that costs 3 times as much to "improve adherence." It's accurate to say they are correcting a pricing anomaly, I suppose, except it's one that didn't exist until research proved you didn't necessarily need as much of this medicine. You pay for your survival, not the drug.

Most drugs have a bunch of patents, including ones for the active ingredient, the delivery mechanism, the coating, etc. The patents will have staggered expiration dates, which can maximize the time a drug remains on patent. Albuterol inhalers, for example, which used to be generic until they were reformulated to be ozone safe, has 4 US patents for one particular formulation (ProAir). That helps keep this 40 year old drug at $57-$70 an inhaler. Somehow, back when it was generic, it was $4 an inhaler. Albuterol was supposed to be going generic again any minute now for the past 2-3 years, but it's still hung up in court —all for a drug that probably ought to be over-the-counter. IMHO.

The only one that I've found to lower my pressure while not suppressing my heart rate during exercise (and thus causing me to pass out) is Losartan. It costs $60 per month or $720 per year.

At that rate, my medication is around low-midrange in cost.

I take Losartan (100 mg). I used pay $10 for a 90 day supply from the local supermarket pharmacy without insurance. I now pay a $0.00 for a 90 day supply with a zero dollar premium medicare advantage plan.

You're paying too much. You need to shop around for a better price. Try using https://www.goodrx.com/

4 50mg vials is around $9k USD. Standard dosage for adults is 200mg every 3 weeks. That's about $156k per year. http://www.merck.com/product/u... https://www.goodrx.com/keytrud... In contrast, my Remicade for arthritis is about $40k / year, but my insurance brings it down to about a $300 / year co-pay. So you don't have to be rich. You just need a job with decent benefits.

If you can't afford a $600 EpiPen, buy a $144 Adrenaclick. Only if you can't afford that do you go for the homebrew.

> Copays? How about cash price?

Try this website: Don’t go to the pharmacy without checking drug prices at GoodRx first.

I'm on Tribenzor, which is literally just a mix of three regular and cheap blood pressure medicines, but it's 'not generic' so I have to pay a much more expensive rate.

Then you're part of the problem. Tell your physician that you want medications that you can afford without copays and you don't want to fall into a donut hole at the end of the year when you've maxed out your benefits for the year and have to pay full cost for a month or more.

If your doc refuses to change to generic alternatives, there are two options. One is that there are no generics that can treat what you have, the other is that your doc is in the pocket of their local pharmaceutical reps.

BTW, check out http://goodrx.com/ and put in your zip code to see what your medications cost at local pharmacies.

Yeah, I hear the black market prices for simvastatin are astronomical.