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US Drugmaker Raises Price of Vitamins By More Than 800% (ft.com)
David Crow, reporting for the Financial Times: A US drugmaker is charging almost $300 for a bottle of prescription vitamins that can be bought online for less than $5, in the latest attempt at price gouging in the world's largest healthcare market. Avondale Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Niacor, a prescription-only version of niacin, by 809 per cent last month, taking a bottle of 100 tablets from $32.46 to $295 (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source), according to figures seen by the Financial Times. Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the version approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat high cholesterol. Avondale, a secretive Alabama-based company, put the price of Niacor up shortly after acquiring the rights to the medicine in a so-called "buy-and-raise" deal -- a strategy made famous by Martin Shkreli, the disgraced biotech entrepreneur.
There is a special place in hell for people like this. This isn't Capitalism this is unethical behavior, and exploitation pure and simple. EpiPen the sequel anyone?
Maybe CVS et. al. that brought affordable solutions to consumers could help but this just needs investigation.
EpiPen from 2016....
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/24/epipen-price-gouging-came-as-mylan-pulled-off-tax-inversion.html
Eat Vegemite.
"Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the [overpriced prescription] version"
Translation: Doctors get a kickback from prescribing a vitamin. Clueless patients fill the prescription and send it to their insurance. Everybody loses except doctors and drug companies.
"approved by the US Food and Drug Administration"
Translation: FDA approved vitamins that other vitamin manufacturers either cant get approval for or have to spend a fortune to get.
So drug company gets a government monopoly on a vitamin that doctors are all too eager to prescribe to their patients for $300 a pop.
Doctors sell drugs marketed to them by drug companies.
Take an active role in your health care and question why you can't use a generic (which your insurance will most likely require) before you blindly pay for something.
"some doctors still prefer to use"
If your doctor does this, just find a new doctor. There is no good reason to put up with this.
Congratulations. In just a few words, you managed to betray a staggering amount of ignorance with regards to;
1. vitamins or their "development"
2. socialism
3. life expectancy in "socialist" countries (hint: it's higher and increasing) such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, compared to USA (hint: it's lower and decreasing).
4. health care costs in "socialist" countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, compared to USA.
I suppose we can only blame the - equally - sorry state of education in the USA.
Artificially expensive niacin is still better than statins, another cholesterol-lowering drug that is expensive and toxic for muscles (yes, heart included, that is the funny point)
These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains.
How about this? Give the FDA the power to investigate cases of rampant profiteering due to any medical-related patents. If a company is found guilty of profiteering, all patents related to the case are invalidated. Patents are a grant by the government (and the people it represents) to protect original research, which we want to encourage. But when companies abuse that private-public contract, they should be punished accordingly by the loss of those patents.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
There are plenty of foods that can give you the necessary vitamins. Eat some veggies and a reasonable amount of real beef/chicken or other fatty foods and balance it out in your diet with good amounts of other vegetables and fruits so it will be taken up by your body. Drink some wine and beer while you're at it too, within reason, you can get all this food and more within 15 minutes for a family of 4 with less what you'll spend for a single person at McDonalds.
Taking vitamin supplements is generally a waste since you're taking in more than your body needs, so most of it is simply excreted and your body needs other chemicals to even absorb them properly.
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Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.
Tell that to the Colleges and Universities that actually perform most biotech research, largely backed by taxpayer funds. Socialize costs and privatize profits now that's good old American capitalist ingenuity for you
Holy shit! Godwin's law AND Poe's law rolled into one comment!
You win my Internet today!
CEO's are psychopaths. They don't "catch on" anymore than mafia bosses or drug lords catch on.
Why are CEO's psychopaths ? Because we want them that way. Shareholders want the best return on their investments, and manipulative, cut-throat, ruthless, heartless, soulless psychopaths are always more efficient than any other person who would take moral and ethical matters into consideration. So eventually, psychopath always end-up being the ones to keep their job.
That's an unavoidable side effect of corporatism.
Goverment regulations cause this problem. Now that we are getting rid of NObamacare, this problem will go away. GUARANTEED.
This new administration could have been an opportunity to bring open-market forces to medicine. But so far, I see no indication of this happening. If anything, the swamp is getting deeper.
These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains .
These "idiots" specifically target Medicare which is forbidden by law from doing cost/benefit analysis or from negotiating costs, which means that while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.
This of course is by design, Big Pharma spends a lot of money on lobbyists and campaign contributions to keep the gravy train rolling
Ever heard of Bayer ? Or Merck (I am speaking of the german one, not the US one It was a german company before the nationalization of 1915) one of the biggest pharmaceutical company ? And yes it does research all over the world, include Darmstadt near where I live. Whoever modded you insightful has no fucking clue and just acted out of the stupid US ideology that the word socialism is bad and an insult, when in reality the US practice some form of socialism, they jsut don't recognize it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Woah, wait a second here... Did you get approval from the Elders of the Internet?
#DeleteFacebook
Yeah, but the government forces us all to subsidize the insurance industry (thanks to the Affordable Care Act), so should we be surprised that this happens? They have deep pockets thanks to all of us.
You better give a link, because googling vitam fraud (at least from my region/user) does not give the results you are speaking of. It does give results about *herbal* supplement being fraud having none of the annoucned ingredient, but nothing about vitamin product, frankly most of which are actually sold for a few euros here around in bottle of 30 or 40 (and the ingredient lsit is not advisory for those AFAIK), and are sold by the mainline producer, and since they are mostly mixing up different (relatively cheap with respect to the quantities) chemicals in different proportion rather than complicated processes, I would wager there is few if any intentional fraud. OTOH this is an interresting read : https://www.alternet.org/perso... (there are more traditional sources if you prefer them).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The evil assholes involved in this should be afraid to show themselves in public for fear of immediately being beaten to death by an angry mob.
A beter approach might be yo allow Americans to shop the global market for compounds that meet the standards of European or Asian equivalents of the FDA. This would prevent US suppliers from monopolizing the market.
Yeah, I pulled some strings and got the whole Internet on loan for the day. I just had to promise that I would make sure the blinky light keeps blinking.
The Martin Shkreli case is about a 70-80 year old drug that was "re-monopolized" under FDA regulations, raising its price over 10,000x. The basic patents are looooong expired. The FDA is not a solution, it is a huge source of the problems - Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man, ya know!
Looks like there is competition at $5 online. So this is a non story.
My, my, are you STUPID. The company wouldnt be rising prices if they knew they couldnt get away with it
Just so everybody knows the differences. Niacin performance varies with its dissolution and absorption rate.
"Instant release" can vary by tablet construction and meals. A typical aimpoint is 3000 mg per day in divided doses.
The longest, slowest, extended release forms can become toxic at high doses and should be removed from the market. It took makers a number of years to optimize the intermediate release forms for cutting cholesterol and minimizing the flush or initial burn in. The supplement Enduracin is, or used to be, considered the premier time release formulation, based on the research of Robert Kowalski. Typically 1500 mg per day, divided into 3 doses.
... more importantly, you are guaranteed it will have exactly the amount of niacin it says on the label.
If I have this right:
Actually, you're guaranteed that the company did tests that show that, if it is not beyond the expiration date and hasn't been improperly stored, the drug will have at least 95% of the activity it claims on the label (for the on-label applications).
That's a heck of a lot tighter than OTC vitamins (even absent fraud). But let's be careful about saying "exactly".
(Lots of drugs are still quite potent far beyond their labelled expiration dates, though you don't necessarily know HOW potent. The manufacturing-to-expiration time is often when the company decided the formulation had adequate shelf life and stopped paying for testing, rather than the point where the drug degraded enough that it was close to missing the potency requirements.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The new administration tried to repeal ACA, a first step to "bringing open-market forces to medicine" but failed. They'll keep trying.
Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this.
Socialism is not an easy fix for cases like this. Socialism caused this case. Namely, it was caused by socialising the cost of inventions by a) granting a government-created monopoly to the inventors of this vitamin and b) creating a government bureaucracy with the power to test medicine for safety and efficacy,
In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.
The parts of that claim that are not vague are false.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
... while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs or threaten to drop them from the covered list, Medicare has no choice but to pay whatever the asking price is.
Here's my complaint. After my wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor (GBM) the day before Thanksgiving 2005, she was prescribed Temodar for her chemotherapy treatment. The list price for one month of treatment (literally, one bottle of pills) was $11,000 US. The price using my BC/BS was $1,100 (10% copay) and the price using her Optima HMO was $40 -- and she would have required several months of treatment. If the drug maker can afford to sell drugs at the reduced/negotiated price to those people with insurance, they can afford to sell it at that price to everyone. Anything else is simply greed.
Susan died seven weeks after diagnosis in Jan 2006, having never finished that first bottle of meds.
Remember Sue...
A side note about that particular medication. The label warned to avoid handling the pills and breathing any pill dust as it can cause lung cancer. Really nice stuff...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
A better question (which I do not know the answer to) is, does the capitalist US produce more innovation than the socialist EU?
Between the two, which produces more healthcare breakthroughs that make it to pharmacists/chemists?
***BE VERY CAREFUL*** !!!
There is Niacinamide and then there is Nicotinic Acid
Nicotinic acid is preferred in the treatment of high cholesterol levels while niacinamide is not preferred in this treatment. This is because since niacinamide is a derivative of niacin, the cholesterol lowering properties in niacinamide are inhibited
Nicotinic acid is also preferred in treating circulatory problems because of its effects on the blood vessels and the role it plays in lowering high cholesterol levels hence preventing hardening of the arteries
On the other hand, high Nicotinic acid doses can cause flushing a condition that causes blood vessels to widen
This makes the capillaries under the skin to expand to allow more blood to flow making the skin to become red and itchy
Niacinamide does not have the effect of skin flushing and that is why it is preferred over niacin in the treatment of pellagra, a condition that results due to lack of vitamin B3
Is that even legal? Oh, right, no it isn't. Under federal law it is not legal to import prescription drugs into the United States unless you are the manufacturer. This includes drugs manufactured in the United States and shipped to other countries. So, you're already committing a crime.now. If you were in Canada, you'd end up doing the same thing, right? Or put simply, nationalizing medicine has fuck all to do with what you just said.
Of course you could argue something about what you're taking is not "prescription" drugs because you didn't technically receive a prescription or something. Obviously that's not something the FDA or Canada is going to accept as an excuse. Nor are exceptions like "It is to be used to treat a serious condition and no effective treatment is available in the United States." going to fly because you readily acknowledge there's an effective treatment and you're simply refusing to buy the more expensive option.
This is precisely, btw, what I'm talking about. We're getting the worst of both worlds: enough of a medical system funded by the government to make amazing new drugs and to have some of the best treatment options but then encoding in laws that prevent you from going a cheaper route because tax payer funded research doesn't translate into tax payer funded treatments. Nor is there a willingness to accept "obsolete drugs" because of malpractice lawsuits.
If you think the enemy is nationalization, then you're missing the forest for the trees. The enemy is a government that is composed of individuals who will push things like banning medicine regardless. Turn this situation around and make nationalized medicine a thing, and I bet you that it'll be the 1-5 cent pills that will be pushed and the $20,000-$30,000 a month pills that will be effectively banned.
Besides Trump shit like this is one of the reasons. Americans are tired. Americans once thought only poor people who made bad choices do not get free healthcare and that due to capitalism the US healthcare is superior to Europe and Canada where they come to the US due the superiority ... which was the view in the 1990s.
Greed, corruption, automation, and insanity on the right where the GOP is very very far right and crazy has changed things.
America is historically anti communist due to the end of World War II were Russia was the new Nazi germany as they owned 1/3 of the world! These folks are now old gray hairs and dying out.
Some voters voted for Trump as a middle finger to all this. They got had and now the left with the introduction of Obamacare have both caused a fire. Something has to change. People are dying. In Alabama British reporters were shocked to see poverty normally seen in third world countries in the good old USA outside of the cities. The young folks screwed over can't buy homes like their parents. Enough is enough. This is just one example and the Tax bill which was a gift to the lobbyists who treated the GOP with dont' bother coming to us for money if you don't rip people off for us just happened.
It is now time.
http://saveie6.com/
Some investment firm did the same thing with pinworm medicine. What used to be two competing prescription medicines at around $15 is now a single option at $400 a pill, minimum two pills. Doctors don't realize the exorbitant cost because it's a new change and because insurance often covers it. Pharmacies don't stock the new medicine because of the exorbitant cost and will only order it if you can prove you're covered by your insurance. Result, a royally screwed up national healthcare market so that a handful of rich greedy assholes can unfairly profiteer off people's health requirements.
The current approach to "draining the swamp" is to hire the alligators or appoint them to cabinet positions.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Considering that production of stuff like that basically costs nothing, $5 for 100 pills is already a rip off.
What is wrong with just eating healthy? You don't need vitamin supplements.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You are an idiot.
In European countries etc. you are supposed to get drugs by a prescription. Not by "buying them cheap" in a drug store.
Of course they are available ... but not for "sale" to medicate a kid with out professional supervision, moron.
In Asia, I pay 2 cents per pill for an "obsolete drug" that stops some common forms of cancer metastasis but is unadvertised
Care to name that drug, so the rest of the world can survive cancer metastasises, too?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
First of all in socialism governments have no monopoly on invention, you are an idiot.
Secondly, vitamins are not invented. They simply exist. Fruits contain them, the skin produces them, meat contains them etc. Idiot.
You seem to think vitamins only exist in forms of pills and people need to eat them to be "more healthy" ... you are mistaken.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
markets can work beautifully in many cases since it allows consumers to decide how the money is spent and can allow choices and competition.
But, its time for some anti-gouging laws because this is getting outrageous. Don't confuse the issue of consumer driven choices on what they want to buy and the idea that we need some regulations here to stop the consumer from being abused by these kinds of tactics. An anti gouging law of course doesnt mandate the consumer what kind of vitamin to buy but would stop them from being gouged, so its not really a rabid anti-market thing.
Its not just this vitamin but other drugs are being hiked in this manner.
I also know that research on drugs does take place in a taxpayer funded manner. This is not a rebuke of markets since private investment can also fund many important drugs as well. Each comes with pros and cons so its a good idea to have both modes of research funding. Sometimes bureaucracies in government can hamper research and sometimes the risk averse nature of markets can so its good to be able to have one to balance the other, regarding things that are so critical in curing diseases.
Free market medical move #1 was ending the ACA (Obamacare) mandate which would financially lock most people into FDA monopoly medicines and often poorly performing maimstream medicine. Many problems can be better addressed by the closer-to-natural-biochemistry of supplements, but first you need a little money leftover to start.
Niacor is just niacin. There's no patent on Niacin since it's a natural vitamin. You can still buy Niacin without any prescription for cheaper than it was on prescription before the change.
So... your rant about Obamacare and natural supplements doesn't make any sense but the actual story doesn't make any sense either, so I guess you win?
I'm guessing it's like if AOL raised it's rates 800 percent. People like you would immediately blame government interference even though that has nothing to do with it and subscribing to AOL is totally pointless anyway.
Doctor's prefer this because you don't always know what you're getting when you buy OTC vitamins. They're largely unregulated. When you buy prescription vitamins you know exactly what you're getting because they're now fully regulated by the FDA. Source: I've had close family members with cancer who've been prescribed vitamins.
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It was discovered in 1873 at a public university.
I'm really flabbergasted at the trolls on this story. I mean for fucks sake, how do you imply capitalism was responsible for vitamins being "developed?"
Give the FDA the power to investigate cases of rampant profiteering due to any medical-related patents.
Sure, but worth pointing out there's no patent here in this specific case. They bought the brand name and the exclusive rights to sell it as a prescription, not exclusive rights to sell it whatsoever.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
As usual, you seem to be talking out of your ass. The Martin Shkreli case is about a 64 year old drug, Dataprim, which has a small pool of users. Shkreli relied mostly on market inefficiency to raise the price. Basically, they bought Dataprim with the intention of raising the price, so they targeted a medically necessary drug that had no currently available alternatives. In their purchase agreement they required the previous owner to shut down 2nd party distribution to make sure no one could undercut their price. They knew since the user pool was so small, there would be limited incentive for other drug manufacturers to invest in producing a generic alternative.
The only role the FDA played was that they would require that a new dug actually be tested to ensure that it does what it's supposed to do, so they would have increased the cost to produce a new version of the drug by requiring quality control.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Looks like there is competition at $5 online. So this is a non story.
Where is this FDB approved Niacin supplement available online?
Doctors prescribe the prescription version when a person's health is on the line since they can be assured that it contains the labeled amount of Niacin, while OTC products are not well regulated and can contain varying amounts of the vitamins as well as other fillers.
In Asia, I pay 2 cents per pill for an "obsolete drug" that stops some common forms of cancer metastasis but is unadvertised, ignored and/or unavailable in most of the world. This saves me $20-30,000 a month in the US for a biotech drug.
Any why is that I wonder? An obsolete miracle drug that stops the spread of common forms of cancer, it is cheap to make, and nobody outside Asia makes it or uses it... Doesn't that sound a little fishy to you? At what point does your bullshit detector go off? Asian 'medicine' is notorious for all sorts of worthless quack treatments and the FDA was created to keep useless, dangerous, and addictive medicine away from people. They aren't perfect, but they do a pretty good job of that.
If you have a real condition that is treated by this 'medicine', I am happy for you and I wish you a long life. But you should really read what you wrote and think carefully about why the entire rest of the world isn't using this miracle drug.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Ya, I'm aware there's more to the expense than the co-pay - I forgot to include that, and the part paid by insurance obviously varies - but the total price paid is negotiated by the drug maker and insurance company and is less than the raw list price -- though our co-pays are often based on that list price. I was simply using the BS/BS and Optima co-pays as references that probably reflect, to some extent, the total negotiated price paid by the insurer.
Thanks.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Socialism is an easy fix for cases like this. In a socialist system this vitamin wouldn't even be available because it never would have been developed in the first place.
Because we all know companies would never take billions in state subsidies while morons like you fuck yourselves by believing that free market bullshit. Socialism for the rich, harsh reality for the free market fundies amongst the public.
Energy subsidies
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm
Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. See the manufacturing consent videos when you get the time.
Science on reasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349
Wikileaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABDiHspTJww&feature=youtu.be
Manufacturing consent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM
https://vimeo.com/39566117
US distribution of wealth
https://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
"two large randomized controlled trials of niacin, AIM-HIGH and HPS2-THRIVE, have shown that despite its effects on HDL-C, niacin does not decrease the incidence of cardiovascular events and may have significant adverse effects."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
How about this. If you do not like the law, buy your own. --lobying industry
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Name of the drug? I would be happy if he named the country. Israel, Japan and a few countries more are al Asia.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
These idiot pharmaceutical companies are just going to bring massive government regulation down on their heads by pulling this shit for short-term gains.
Err this is the USA we're talking about. Trump would likely see this as an example of capitalist excellence and then abolish the FDA while saying it will be better for all Americans to let the market self regulate.
which means that while every private insurance provider will negotiate low costs
This is a fucked system in the first place. You shouldn't have to rely on an insurance to "negotiate" the cost of your life. The only thing an insurance provider should negotiate is with the client how much of a gap needs to be paid.
Price discrimination for medical services is not legal in most other countries, and outright regulated in many.
Vitamins are discovered, not invented. How to _refine_ the vitamins is typically patented.
Consumers need to take responsibility for themselves, their health, and their finances. Know what your doctor is doing, know what medicines are being prescribed. it's your health, after all, and ultimately also your wallet.
Example: I went in to a clinic for an ultrasound of the other day. While I'm sitting there, the doc places his ultrasound gadget on some unrelated body-part. On my bill appears a charge for Fr. 60. I can either blindly accept the bill, or I can apply my brain, go back to the doctor's office and say "not what I ordered, not paying this, take it off the bill". Doctors are service providers just like any other - people need to treat them as such, and not as all-knowing and infallible demigods.
Same for prescriptions. You get a prescription, tell the doc to explain what it is, what it's for, etc.. Ask if there is an OTC or generic version. If not, ask if there is an equivalent medicine that would be OTC or generic. Also: research it yourself: all this stuff is online. Sometimes you'll even find information that your doctor is unaware of.
Lastly, in the US where ObamaCare has screwed up the markets beyond recognition, there are an increasing number of places that will take cash. Last time I visited the US, I saw exactly this: while we were there, our son came down with strep throat. Went to a local doc, told him we were paying cash: they were suddenly all smiles, and the prices were very reasonable. They didn't want to deal with the insurance crap any more than we did.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
"socialist" countries [...] such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia
I'm currently living in the United Kingdom. Within five minutes' walk of my home are three places - one pharmacy and two shops - where I can buy vitamins, with no prescription. They're cheap, costing only a few pounds, and if any of them raised their prices, I'd just go to one of their competitors. These vitamins are manufactured by private companies, transported by private companies, and retailed by private companies.
The situation in Australia, when I lived there, was similar.
This is a perfect, efficient example of capitalism in action - and you're calling it socialism? The actions in this story are only possible because of government control of vitamin distribution, requiring prescriptions. When it comes to healthcare, the US really does appear to be a socialist hellhole.
This government dislikes regulation. There are probably a number of reasons why, but they were put in place to prevent corporations screwing over the little guy.
We are back to allowing the super rich to profit even more and not supporting our fellow man. IMHO you shouldnâ(TM)t run a country as a corporation, but as a family. A profitable government is not one acting in the best interests of it people.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
In European countries etc. you are supposed to get drugs by a prescription. Not by "buying them cheap" in a drug store.
Depends on what sort of 'drugs' you're talking about. Things like vitamin supplements or paracetamol you just buy in a supermarket her in the UK (or pay ten times as much for branded products in a Health Store if you choose). They have to meet legal standards because of evil government regulations stopping you selling rat poison as aspirin, so yes there is a barrier to entry.
But things like anti-depressants, yes you need a prescription and quite right too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm currently living in the United Kingdom. Within five minutes' walk of my home are three places - one pharmacy and two shops - where I can buy vitamins, with no prescription.
They also sell prescription strength ones for which you do need a prescription. If you get low on Vit-D it's not all that unusual to get prescribed some.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Eat Vegemite.
Now what do I do about the continuous vomiting?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My, my, are you STUPID. The company wouldnt be rising prices if they knew they couldnt get away with it
Not only that, demand will go up because people will demand the "$300 good stuff" not the "$5 garbage".
No sig today...
Excellent. Although invalidating the patents is definitely not punishment, itâ(TM)s merely correcting the wrong. Punishment would go further, like fining the corporation 1-10% of annual income, AND fining all employees involved 1-10% of annual salary. Accountability is seriously lacking in business and government.
Posting anonymously because I have already moderated... ..And in the UK, prescription prices are fixed for the patient at £8 something (around $10-$11, I guess). I wouldn't know, since I'm of an age where I get them for free.
.
It is a story because most doctors in the U.S. prescribe medicines by brand name. If the prescription forbids substitutions (a decision that was possibly made with the assumption that there isn’t much cost difference between generic and branded versions), or if if the brand name manufacturer had introduced any subtle change in the formula or presentation (for example, dosage of 295 mg instead of 300 mg, such that no perfectly identical generic will be found), the pharmacy will deliver the branded version, no questions asked. The patient will pay their ten dollar co-pay and the insurance will be billed the rest. Nobody will notice anything. And the following year, everybody’s health insurance premiums will go up by another insane percentage, as usual.
There is no real competition in pharmaceuticals because nobody (prescribers, patients, government) cares about the cost of medicines (or treatment, for that matter), except insurance companies (who secretly negotiate what they pay) and, regrettably, patients who are not insured enough to cover the cost of what they need (and those, as we all know too well, have zero influence).
beneficial? Just eat right and you shouldn't need them.
Whee! Time for some off-topic speculation!
Some initial disclaimers:
1) I'm going to assume Trump isn't impeached, imprisoned, has a stroke and dies or just decides its too much work and that he does indeed run again in 2020.
2) I'm going to assume that there's no amazing superstar Democrat coming out of left field (har har pun) that I've never heard of and therefore of course can't foresee.
With that out of the way we have on the right well.. Trump. Since we've assumed he's not impeached, we'll also assume that Muller finds nothing and his record is cleared of wrongdoing (or at least its buried deep enough that even a special investigation can't find it.)
And on the left we have.. who? Bernie Sanders would be the obvious choice based on his current standings in the polls.. but he's too far left for much of the established Democratic party and they're likely to try their best to keep him off the ticket again. But lets assume they fail and he gets on there and we get two old guys with wild hair battling it out. To be honest, I'd probably still give it to Trump. He's enough of a showman that I think he could bluster his way out of 4 years of screwing the people and essentially out-loudmouth Sanders.
So who else.. there's some talk that Chelsea Clinton might be interested in running. I think she might have a chance if she's very, very careful about stepping out of her parents' shadow while not entirely disowning them. It would be a very fine line to walk but I think its doable if she's got the gumption. I don't really know enough about her to judge whether she's got that gumption or not but even if she does, I don't think its would work in 2020. Maybe by 2028 or even 2032 depending on what happens between now and then. Hillary's downfall is still too fresh in mind.
So she's out. Bernie's pretty questionable. That leaves.. who? There's just not that many big-name democrats right now and the moderately-known dems like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have been getting their names dragged through the mud far too much. They would have to go on a miracle winning streak to gain back enough traction to even have a hope of even getting nominated (and that's already assuming they would want the job and accept the nomination..)
Trouble is, while everyone makes a stink about Trumps ratings right now, a lot of people don't seem to notice or care about the fact that Democrats aren't really doing much better. There is a large amount of the American public who are just disillusioned with the whole mess and don't really like either party. That's a very different and relatively new concept. We're talking about a large percentage of voters who actively dislike politics rather than just being apathetic about it.
Going back to my assumptions, #1 is of course pretty tenuous. Between Muller and Trump's age (and not-especially-healthy lifestyle) and the recent speculation that he may just not want to deal with another 4 years, its entirely possibly we won't see him in 2020. Now the GOP isn't nearly as lacking for candidates as the Dems are. Paul Ryan comes to mind immediately -- he's pretty camera-friendly if nothing else and seems to be held in fairly high esteem (at least by those who like tax cuts for the wealthy.) But he doesn't have Trump's showmanship and definitely would not be as strong.
I could also see Ivanka or maybe even Eric trying their hand at the game (Don Jr's shot himself in the foot too many times.. Eric gets a lot of flak for being less than photogenic but he hasn't actually done anything that would rule him out.. that we know about.. and the few things we have heard about Eric have been grudgingly positive, or at least not explicitly negative. Then again maybe he really is as dense as the liberal media mocks him for being..) But as with Chelsea, I don't see it happening in 2020 for either of them. Would certainly be an interesting time if we get Chelsea vs Ivanka at some point though -- the US would guaranteed have their first female president if tha
I should add a third assumption:
3) We don't have WW3 break out or a Yellowstone eruption or something similarly disastrous that just flat out changes everything and makes all current politics somewhat irrelevant.
The current approach to "draining the swamp" is to hire the alligators or appoint them to cabinet positions.
o no, they ARE draining the swamp, it's just they ever specified which swamp and where it was being drained to.
Turns out it's being drained right into DC.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Damned commies thinking that lives should be worth more than money.
The various health organizations around the world explicitly do NOT maintain equivalent standards for (mostly political) reasons. Or in other words, the FDA would explicitly ban that practice because it would potentially allow for the import of unapproved (by them) drugs.
But even if you ignore that, most of the major drug makers take out patents for their drugs in all major market countries, so they'd just jack the price up to US levels if they saw you were purchasing the drug from a US address -- and then charge you international shipping as well. And if you had them shipped to a cheaper country and brought them back to the US yourself well.. you can already do that (as long as you have a valid prescription for the drug, the border agents aren't going to question whether you brought the bottle with you both ways or just one..)
Capitalism is by nature unethical.
Only if you contort and narrow the definition of ethics and capitalism to fit a very contrived view point. Capitalism is neither ethical or unethical. A person can be a capitalist and be very ethical or they can be unethical. Capitalism as a philosophy and an economic system is amoral. (which is different from immoral) It is the society around it and the norms of that society that determine whether an action taken is ethical or not.
it relies on competition to drive unethical practices out and leave only the best of the best.
Capitalism has nothing to do with ethical or unethical practices. Never did and never will. That's why we have regulations around capitalism to shape behavior towards ethical practices.
Generics are the exact same as the originals.
That's not true in a lot of cases. The active ingredients are supposed to be the same but the formulation is rarely identical. Different inactive ingredients, different processing techniques, etc. Most of the time these differences are inconsequential but not always.
Let's call this sort of thing "The Shkreli Maneuver".
Because there was absolutely no abuse happening before the ACA was introduced, of course. Obama just arbitrarily decided to stake his reputation on regulating an industry that was perfectly functional before he got involved. Makes perfect sense! Just like Net Neutrality where regulations were introduced for the sole purpose of breaking a perfectly functional ISP market!
I really don't get how people can be that dumb. Politicians don't just pick a perfectly functional market one day and introduce legislation to fuck it up for no reason. They introduce legislation to try and fix a problem they identify. Now you might not agree with their fix, and their fix may not even work, but claiming that there was no problem at all and they were just breaking the market.. out of spite I guess..? takes stupidity to an unusual degree. Or at least it would have been an unusual degree before Trump started using exactly that argument as his rhetoric. Now its just common place stupidity I guess.
Translation: Doctors get a kickback from prescribing a vitamin. Clueless patients fill the prescription and send it to their insurance. Everybody loses except doctors and drug companies.
Here is a less cynical and probably more accurate version
Over The Counter vitamins are an almost completely unregulated market (congress specifically forbade the FDA from regulating vitamins) and it's been demonstrated that major retailers are selling fakes. So if you are a doctor and it's important to ensure a patient get the proper dosage of that vitamin, what other options do you have?
Translation: FDA approved vitamins that other vitamin manufacturers either cant get approval for or have to spend a fortune to get.
The FDA is forbidden from regulating vitamins. The only power the FDA has is to limit the sale of a product it finds to be unsafe.
Most vitamins don'r degrade at all.
Care to bet on that? Unless you can store them in a thermally stable environment with no exposure to light, humidity or oxygen there what you just said is demonstrably not true.
Kid: "Hey mom! Look at this! This Himalaya salt has a 'best consume before 2022' date! It must be really good!"
Salt is not a vitamin.
I live in the U.S., I can but vitamins, with no prescription, in every grocery store and most convenience stores in the country. So, you completely misunderstood this.
That being said, you are correct that this is only possible because of government control...of course, I suspect that the end result of this will be similar to what happened when Martin Shkreli pulled his game. Another company looked at the product and said, "There is not patent on that. We can make that, and make a good profit on it, for less than they were selling it for before this all happened." Martin Shkreli is a complete jerk, but the result of his action was that the drug in question is now available for less than it was before he tried to profiteer off of it. If he had not proved himself such a selfish jerk in other ways, I might suspect he did it to create just that outcome.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Of course, the end result was that there is now another company producing two competing medicines which it is selling for less than the company Martin Shkreli bought originally charged for it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I liked it so much... I bought the company!!!!
They are pumping the swamp. But have you even been in a swamp. You can pump the swamp all day long, but shit flows in as fast as you pump it out. All we are doing is rotating the festering assholes in the swamp.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Cancer is a bastard. Sorry for your loss.
But yeah, the list prices are outright blackmail. They'll charge as much as they can get away with or they damage your health. What is costs them to produce is irrelevant. You want to make an immediate impact on the price of medical care? Make drug and medical service discounts illegal. If insurance companies have to pay the same price as non-insured patients, costs will drop precipitously and immediately.
Oh and all those people out there who think medical companies should be non-profits? That does nothing... They still ridiculously overcharge and convert the extra cash into lavish buildings, equipment, and salaries for executives.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
"Chinese herbal medicine" Oh, and the pill will increase your libido, grow your cock by 3" (apologies to the women), and ensure your pregnancy is a healthy one (apologies to the men).
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
It is mostly cofinanced. According wikipedia, 28% is fed, 29% is pharma, 19% is biotech. The rest is public, private, & charity mix.
Then you have to consider that almost all research is tax deductible which with a conservative 20% tax rate, thatâ(TM)s another 9% coming from fed & local govt.
Then there is the patent aspect that is given to the company cosponsoring. Which pretty much privatizes the benefits of said research.
Also companies rarely fund âoegood for societyâ research. Normally it is what ever has the highest return. The govt has to âoeencourageâ via cofunding and patent grants, to research rare or common but low return diseases (ie: malaria).
Finally, the infrastructure to support the research is usually on the govt dime. Such as CDC & WHO maintaining stock of the most hazardous substances & diseases.
So in the US, there is significant public funding but ROI seems almost entirely private.
Unfortunately the current presidential administration is likely to gives these sobs a medal for innovate business practices. (see latest tax bill for reference). We are coming just short of "let them eat cake"....
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Thanks to wonderful Utah Senator Orrin Hatch(R)
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
And you can google for websites which independently test various vitamin/supplements.
Great. Some random website tells me its ok. I know it must be true because it is on the internet. [/sarcasm]
Also note that non-prescription vitamins and drugs ("capitalism in action") are dirt cheap, versus FDA approved prescription drugs (government in action) such as Niacor, Epipen, etc are only affordable to lottery winners.
Non prescription drugs are either extremely safe (like asprin) or aren't actually drugs. We have a prescription system because quackery is a real thing. What you get without regulations is something like homeopathics and other snake oil "cures" or fake vitamins that don't actually contain what's on the label. Prescription vitamins are a thing because the OTC versions are of undependable and unverified quality. For some people that isn't good enough.
Now that's no excuse for jacking up the price but quality control IS a real issue with drugs and vitamins.
Wockhardt has FDA approval for a generic. I am not sure if Wockhardt would enter the market because of this. All they have to do is make it and sell it to lower the price.
You can find information like this at Drugs@FDA, with the lovely link https://www.accessdata.fda.gov.... If you search for NIACOR and then look under the result for therapeutic equivalents, you find the approved Wockhardt product has been approved as Application No. 081134 since 1992.
No. It's really not. The insurance companies have separately negotiated substantial discounts of their own.
So if a treatment is $1,000 list, then a guy with insurance might pay $100, and the insurance company might pay $200. For a total of $300.
Meanwhile, if its covered by medicaid, medicaid pays the full $1000, because they aren't allowed to negotiate, and the government can 'afford it'.
Take a look at other countries too. like Canada and the UK, France, etc. What their health care systems pay the same pharma companies for the same drugs is straight up less. Full stop.
You can do similar in the USA - this is just lunacy
I bought the powder! That stuff is super cheap in powder form and isn't that slow release namby-pamby crap, FEEL THE BURN! I'm not immune the to "Niacin Sunburn", but I rarely get it anymore. If I happen to be a little dehydrated or I drink the stuff too fast I still get one, but if my wife picks up the cup I've been drinking from and just sips it BURN!!!
I bought this over a year ago and I'm still using the same canister (I should take it more regularly, I've gotten lazy about getting a morning drink together).
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Zzzzzz, you must be asleep.
I responded to the prior post, above mine:
"This new administration could have been an opportunity to bring open-market forces to medicine. But so far, I see no indication of this happening. If anything, the swamp is getting deeper."
Dumping the fascistic ACA mandate is a step to bringing open market forces to medicine...
You can see this already. In all but one hospital I have been in - not a huge number, but several - visiting patients etc. there isALWAYS lavish marble tiled atrium etc.
If the doctor tells them something, or prescribes them something, they take it as gospel. I know my doctor sometimes wants me to take this or that, VERY expensive drugs for blood pressure, cholesterol etc. I have found for the BP problem, instead of taking ONE pill, I can get a generic of basically the same thing, take 2 in the morning, one in the evening and the pills are 8 bucks for NINETY DAYS worth. Does the same thing, works just as well. If people would not so much "challenge" their doctor, but ASK QUESTIONS, about alternatives and what not, things would be better off.
Looks like there is competition at $5 online. So this is a non story.
Where is this FDB approved Niacin supplement available online?
Doctors prescribe the prescription version when a person's health is on the line since they can be assured that it contains the labeled amount of Niacin, while OTC products are not well regulated and can contain varying amounts of the vitamins as well as other fillers.
Where is the FDB Niacin supplement available offline? :-P
It is the FDA that approves these things.
Although niacin, a type of vitamin B3, is available in over-the-counter forms for less than $5 per 100 tablets, some doctors still prefer to use the version approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat high cholesterol.
The issue isn't that the FDA-approved drug, which went thru a series of clinical drug trial to prove efficacy of the treatment increased in price, it's that doctors continue to write prescriptions for this approved brand-name treatment, and that insurance companies are still paying for it.
It makes sense that an infrequently-prescribed treatment would go up in price as fewer and fewer prescriptions are written for it (dwindling sales force prices up to pay for recouping treatment approval costs.
Ken
THe FDA does not set drug prices.
Ken
BS.
Every subsidy Obama had in place when he walked out of office last January remains in-place after the current administration repealed the Individual mandate...
People that want insurance and can afford it will still get coverage on exchange, and they will still get any subsidies they are entitled to, that hasn't changed. What has changed is that people that don't want coverage don't have to buy it, and people without compliant coverage won't be paying a fine to subsidise the premiums paid by those with compliant coverage.
Allowing consumers the ability to choose to enroll in coverage or not is how you get to 13 Million that will CHOOSE to forgo coverage.
If premiums go up it will be because the monies that were collected in fines from the uninsured AND the loss of the premiums from all those healthy, young people that feel they don't need coverage.
Repealing the individual mandates gives consumers the ability to opt-out and not be forced to subsidize everyone else's premiums.
Ken
Ya, I'm aware there's more to the expense than the co-pay - I forgot to include that, and the part paid by insurance obviously varies - but the total price paid is negotiated by the drug maker and insurance company and is less than the raw list price -- though our co-pays are often based on that list price.
The thing is, the "list price" is often set to game the discount system. My mom needs a hearing aid. She was told that one she was considering was $12,000 list, something like $1,000 with insurance, or they would "discount" it to $4,000 if you had to pay yourself because you didn't have insurance. So who actually pays list? No one (except maybe Medicare, if they can't actually negotiate discounts), apparently. They jack up the "list" price so that they can give their negotiated discount percent and still rake in money. If they're "discounting" it to $4k for everyone, they're obviously still making money at that price.
No idea about UK, but in France and Germany every insurrance pays the same for the same medical.
Why would they not? As soon as it became public that ine is paying less, the government (or the relevant regulation authority) would demand the same lowered price for everyone.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
From the sound of it, are the Rotating Festering Assholes the DC-based successors to the Butthole Surfers ?
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Vitamins are not invented and I doubt anyone ever had a patent on one of them. No idea what you want to tell me. ... no one has a patent on them.
I'm drinking Caipirinha right now, contains all vitamins from A, B*, C, D, K
So, with your idiotic rant about socialism (which you seam to mix up with comunism) you want to claim that the US government is socialistic because it grants monopolies in terms of patents and trade marks? ...
You are confusing me
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The point I was making is that the French (and German) insurance companies pay less than the list price quoted to the American consumer.
I'm not suggesting what you argued isn't true. I'm just arguing that whatever price the French are paying for their pills its usually much less than the list price an uninsured American has to pay.
It's doctor salaries which are across the board the reason for the absurd costs and also part of the reasons why hospitals can't "afford" to pay for residencies.
Salaries are only one piece of the complex puzzle that explains why US per capita health care costs are more than double those of civilized countries.
Get your own instead for $5 and to hell with what the doctor tells you. B3 is B3 is B3.
Yeah, I read that part. The ACA mandate and health insurance isn't what keeps market forces out of medicine, safety is. It was so idiotic it wasn't worth responding to.
There are many market forces, including the ability to vote with your feet. Having spent their precious money on ACA insurance premiums and copays cuts most people off at the knees - their choices already financially drained, they are forced to do whatever their insurance pays for.
You're apparenty too locked into living, and dying, in an unfree society.
impossible to clear Trump of wrong-doing
Always forget how pedantic /. is. To clarify, he's cleared of enough wrong-doing that he'd still be able to run for the next election. There's almost certainly ties to Russia within Trump's campaign (and probably himself as well) but unless it can be shown that those ties directly impacted the election results (or their actions since taking office,) it likely won't amount to more than a slap on the wrist. Having business dealings with Russia is not a problem. Lying about it when you're running for office is a problem but I doubt its a big enough problem that Trump couldn't bluster his way out of it. Actual treasonous actions on the other hand.. that's a whole different ball game.
you're focusing your attention on the White House, but neglecting Congress
Mostly because the GP was talking about Trump and well, in American politics the president is the face of things.
But if we want to talk about Congress.. I doubt much will change there, especially if Trump gets himself reelected. Sure the odd seat might switch here and there but the house is very republican right now and would have to lose a LOT of seats to swing that.. and the senate hasn't managed to get much done (other than tax cuts for the rich that everyone in congress loves regardless of party,) so switching from a slight republican lean toward a slight democratic lean (especially with republicans controlling both the house and the White House) will probably still leave them just unable to do anything.
Even if Trump doesn't run in 2020, I don't see much change though. Voters are just way too partisan at this point. I mean look at Alabama. Roy Moore damned near won on a platform of "I promise I don't touch little girls!" If a democrat wins the presidency then its likely they'll also take the senate. The house of representatives is still pretty questionable and I doubt they'd get the supermajority (and the ability to start doing things without republican interference) so likely still not much would get done.
A decision in Gill v. Whitford
Even if it does, I'm not sure how much difference it would make. Gerrymandering has been going on for decades by both parties and while it would likely hurt the republicans more at this point, again they have a pretty large lead in the house and killing gerrymandering would hurt many of the democratic seats just as much. We'd hopefully end up with a lot closer and fairer elections on a seat-by-seat basis but looking at it from the higher level view of simple "#dems/#reps" I don't know that it would change things significantly.
Without another superstar on the presidential ticket, I just don't really see things changing that much in the "nobody can get anything done" context. Whether its a republican unable to do anything or a democrat unable to do anything, the end result is the same.
Of course Trump is the superstar right now.. and he had lots of promise to get things done (whether good things or bad is not the point.) But he and his congress just got too greedy on things like healthcare and instead of being able to pass a 90% measure, they repeatedly failed to pass a 120% measure purely because the bills were so unpalatable that even some of their own senators couldn't bring themselves to vote for the things. It takes a lot of screwing over the little guy to make a republican turn down a money grab bill.
Hey! REALLY not neccessary. The shareholders will do it themselves when profits drop. Unless anyone thinks that someone is actually going to PAY that ridiculous amount.
There's one warning though. They may have inside information that these particular vitamins are gtoing to be banned in the near future and are acting retroactively. JUst check out online for what happened to the price of the active ingredient in hoit milk when it was banned from OTC sales (L-Tryptophan)
The US has some of the most expensive health care in the world. The socialised systems are uniformly cheaper (and not by a little bit).
Taxes in many more socialised countries tend to be a bit higher than the US (not as much as you might expect) but it's not for healthcare, it's for all the other things.
Wouldn't buying a competitor's product be a gentler Fuck You than that?
And more effective for the patient, as well?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
The role the FDA played was in not honoring the approval of generics by drugs agencies in untrustworthy banana republics like Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. Since the FDA thinks it has incomparably superior skills and knowledge, manufacturers must pay for redundant FDA approval to sell in the USA, so that can be uneconomic to get a small-market generic approved for the USA. This can produce a monopoly situation ripe for price gouging.
Thanks for keeping a sharp eye on the details. When I wrote "70-80 year years old" extemporaneously , I was thinking of the sulfonamides, so commonly used with Pyrimethamine for malaria, which I've actually used in the combo drug, ca 36-37 yrs ago.
But I agree with the next poster and other factors, to hold FDA regs responsible for creating the conditions to enable the highly inflated US drug price structure. This includes them menacing me over a cheap and highly effective cancer drug even while it was only being used in a foreign country by a foreign citizen. Before I embrassed the FDA manager for the criminal overreach.
... as long as the medicine affected is against easily preventable illnesses ... sorry, but high cholesterol is a result of eating habits ... by changing food intake to more healthy ways of eating, probably near 100% of high cholesterol can be cured ... ...
Of course it is easier to just treat the symptoms instead of the cause
the Republicans are more interested in borrowing another trillion dollars to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy
The previous administration borrowed over $1TN/year in average for each of the previous 8 years and never cut taxes. The current administration signed into law a $1TN increase in the debt over the next TEN YEARS.
Ken
The people that pay the fines have their fines going towards subsidizing other people's premiums, and when the uninsured fine payers get sick they rely on charity care (something cut by PPACA, since 'everyone will be insured') OR they pay for their care out of pocket.
Imagine the healthcare market was like a movie theater, and imagine the theater charged every patron that did not buy food at the concession stand a 'fine' to make popcorn, candy and snacks for more affordable for those that do buy them from the concession stand. That is essentially what the individual mandate was/is.
Ken