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US Patients Battle EpiPen Prices And Regulations By Shopping Online (cnn.com)
"The incredible increase in the cost of EpiPens, auto-injectors that can stop life-threatening emergencies caused by allergic reactions, has hit home on Capitol Hill," reports CNN. Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar reports that the argument "has now turned into civil war in the US Senate":
One senator's daughter relies on Epi-Pen, while another senator's daughter is CEO of Mylan, the single company that is licensed to sell these injectors in the US. On the worldwide market there is no monopoly on these devices... Is it finally time to allow Americans to go online and fill their prescriptions on the world market?
Time reports some patients are ordering cheaper EpiPens from Canada and other countries online, "an act that the FDA says is technically illegal and potentially dangerous." But the FDA also has "a backlog of about 4,000 generic drugs" awaiting FDA approval, reports PRI, noting that in the meantime prices have also increased for drugs treating cancer, hepatitis C, and high cholesterol. In Australia, where the drug costs just $38, one news outlet reports that the U.S. "is the only developed nation on Earth which allows pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices."
Time reports some patients are ordering cheaper EpiPens from Canada and other countries online, "an act that the FDA says is technically illegal and potentially dangerous." But the FDA also has "a backlog of about 4,000 generic drugs" awaiting FDA approval, reports PRI, noting that in the meantime prices have also increased for drugs treating cancer, hepatitis C, and high cholesterol. In Australia, where the drug costs just $38, one news outlet reports that the U.S. "is the only developed nation on Earth which allows pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices."
It should be legal to order the same product from another country. They're both made by the same company. Stupid trade protectionism.
My Telmisartan (technically generic now, but Big Pharma is delaying it) is 6x cheaper overseas. Fuck the corporate kleptocracy and their politcal enablers with a rusty rake.
This is not a free market. In a free market you'd be free to buy from overseas companies.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And still insufficient demand for universal health care. And don't blame the politicians. With the upcoming 95% reelection rate (and 100% republican/democrat monolith), there is no incentive for them to change anything. The only issue monopolizing the media is *he who shall not be named*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I left the US right about when they were starting to be allowed. Now when I go back it's pretty disconcerting, bordering on revolting, to see how much tv space is taken up with drug ads.
There is no reason for drug ads. Period. Drugs should be allowed by efficacy and safety, priced honsetly and prescribed by qualified unbiased doctors for the conditions they treat best. None of that is true in the modern US of A
Several years ago Primatene Mist was removed from the market. Our health care system is now fully controlled by corporations that don't give a rat's ass if we live or die as long as their profits continue to skyrocket, at any cost.
Primatene Mist was banned by the FDA in 2011 because it contained CFCs.
http://hubpages.com/health/Wha...
Do you have evidence that Primatene wanted the FDA to pull their product off the market?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
No one said the company isn't allowed to turn a profit - but as a patient, do you want the sole supplier of medication that keeps you alive to suddenly realize they are the ONLY REASON YOU ARE ALIVE and bumping your daily expense up to a million dollars?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Um. Dude. You might want to look around, this site is largely due to the existence of free software. FREE. People do it and give it away for FREE.
You just can't fathom value being non-monetary which makes your economic-fu weak. Homo econicus ain't no fool, Homo Economicus has gradients of preferences, in relation to and driven by a variety externalities, which regardless of your mental capacity to comprehend them exist. Right now. In you, your inner homo economicus, is erupting with complex value calculations that you are probably to ignorant to clearly understand.
You should stop being so hung up on money, and let your inner homo economicus run free. Enjoy all your preferences, not just the ones society shows you will satisfy you.
A big secret I learned a long time ago, that sort of makes this all work, is that by helping each other (think free shit) we get along better in the universe. It actually makes us happy and fulfilled. What?! That is our most selfish center is, is best satisfied by caring about helping other humans?
That sounds fucked up. Real fucked up... But shit that does make some fucking sense. It's probably our evolutionary edge, because there ain't no fuckin way we out predator'd everything else on this planet lone wolfing it for a few million years... That and thumbs.
Thumbs are no fucking joke.
The solution: Change the FDA. Make it cheap and fast for a drug manufacturer to get approved to make any drug if they can prove that they are using industry-standard (or better) processes for quality control and if they are producing a chemically-identical product.
And exactly how do you propose to change that? Do you want FDA employees to work longer hours? Or do you want them to work twice as fast in the same hours? Can you speed them up like a tape recorder?
Actually, the FDA does a pretty good job right now. They approve drugs faster than European regulators. They had a backup several years ago when Congress (actually, Republicans) thought it would be a great idea to cut taxes and cut the budgets of government agencies.
I remember the CEO of a biotechnology company (I think Centicor) complaining that the FDA inspector couldn't come to his plant because they didn't have the budget for the train fare on Amtrack.
FDA regulation has little to do with why drugs cost so much money. More important is the Republicans refusing to let the government negotiate prices with the drug makers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In the UK, they have an agency, NICE, which decides how much the drugs are worth, which is often half or a third as much as the US price.
As an example, my wife's kidney dialysis sessions are billed out at $3,925 each, for a total of about $600,000 per year. The insurance company's "real price" is $290 per session.
Well, the original intention of Congress was to have free market competition in kidney dialysis, to bring the price down, but that didn't work. There were a lot of small providers but a couple of big companies took over the industry and turned it into a monopoly. You can't negotiate prices with a monopoly.
It seems that in the modern economy, the free market doesn't last long as many industries turn into monopolies. Amazon is a book-selling monopoly. Google is an internet advertising monopoly.
If we must have a monopoly, we might as well have the government running it.