Pardon my French today but I have a "bone to pick" with the manufacturers of drugs in America. Consumers in the United States are paying a disproportionate cost to manufacture drugs. Making this problem worse is the fact that the United States is one of only two countries that allows advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers. If you watch any news program you will heard the line "talk to your doctor and see if _________ is right for you." If your doctor needs to have you recommend a drug to them maybe you need to find a better informed doctor. I would hope they know more about drugs than just me watching TV commercials.
I have always been fortunate to have good prescription coverage so the cost of any prescribed drug I have taken has always been minimal. This is not the case when our vet prescribed an eye medication for our dog. $132 for a small vile of eye drops every 6 weeks seemed to be more than I wanted to pay. I searched on the internet and found a company in Canada that sold this drug for $28. The process of using this company took some work with new prescriptions and pre-payment into an account but the cost savings was worth it. The person at the company in Canada explained how they worked around the problem with Americans using their services by having the drugs legally shipped from a company in the state of Washington.
The drug companies play the game on both sides of the political aisle to prevent importation of drugs from Canada. Even the Obama administration has compromised with the drug manufacturers to get their support for the Affordable Care legislation. While some Republicans like Sen. McCain have supported legislation to allow importation from Canada, Republicans in the Senate have been the ones to prevent legislation from passing in the Senate. Maybe it is time for Republican opponents of the Affordable Health Care program to stop blaming the rise in health care costs on that program and look at the rising cost of prescription drugs that maybe more the cause of the rising costs.
1 comment:
It's getting really out of hand. Look at an article titled Giant Pain in the Wallet. It's about the drug colchicine and how it went from being $30 for a 90 day supply to disappearing and showing up with a new name ( Colcrys) and a price tag of over $200 per month. I had to deal with this when my mother was alive and stopped taking her meds. It all comes down to the FDA making drug companies provide costly trials on drugs that have been on the market prior to 1963. Lots of these "new" drugs that are advertised are simply drugs that have been on the market for years. It's a crying shame that this is allowed to happen.
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