Cost Plus Drugs

[RicInOR]

https://costplusdrugs.com/

Might be worth checking into.

Read More

 

[Jason999]

Pretty awesome

 

[pharmseller]

Generics

 

[bolus]

They are a good option if they have your medication.


Another tip on meds:
25% of all medications that you get at the local pharmacy suffer for copay claw back. This is an insurance term meaning that your copay is more than the cash price of your medication and if you want it cheaper you have to "claw back" your benefits.

So if you have a regular medication at a pharmacy, ask what the cash price is. They have contracts with insurance companies to not tell you if it is cheaper to buy it without insurance. This was reduced when Freds and Walmat went to the $4 prescriptions but I've still have patients find out their copay was way more than the cost of the medication.

For example, Riteaid wanted a copay of $15 for 30 days of lisinopril, a common blood pressure medication. When asked how much the cost of 90 days of the medication without insurance, it was $16. They were trying to charge $45 for a $16 worth of medication.

Also, try to avoid generics from india. This is difficult since that's all they carry some time. But the FDA does not police the quality. If there is a problem, they will refer it back to the company in India to to check the quality and say "we dont have enough funding to check generic medications unless there is a major problem"

F the drug companies, F the insurance companies, F the ATF. peace out.

 

[pharmseller]

Yeah, f those drug companies for developing life-saving medications and then wanting to get paid for doing it!

I say we boycott drugs. Everyone go off their meds for 6 months, send a message to those em-effers!

 

[ma96782]

Well......watching those Thailand Videos. Yeah IMHO, we're being taken advantage of.....by the Medical Mafia in the US.

Aloha, Mark

 

[monkeybutler]

Yeah, f those drug companies for developing life-saving medications and then wanting to get paid for doing it!

Heck yeah gettin' payedd!

I'm ex-pharma. Sure, I enjoyed the $800/night hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, lavish corporate retreats... but guess who paid for all of that, as well as all of the other obscene spending I was party to?

 

[Certaindeaf]

Heck yeah gettin' payedd!

I'm ex-pharma. Sure, I enjoyed the $800/night hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, lavish corporate retreats... but guess who paid for all of that, as well as all of the other obscene spending I was party to?

Boner pills!

 

[pharmseller]

Heck yeah gettin' payedd!

I'm ex-pharma. Sure, I enjoyed the $800/night hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, lavish corporate retreats... but guess who paid for all of that, as well as all of the other obscene spending I was party to?

Those days are long past, at least for my segment of the market. Even back in the day I never got to enjoy the stuff you're talking about. I must have been working for the wrong company!

 

[bolus]

Yeah, f those drug companies for developing life-saving medications and then wanting to get paid for doing it!

I say we boycott drugs. Everyone go off their meds for 6 months, send a message to those em-effers!

They run well above profit margins of every other industry because of the schemes they run. Yes there are good medications which help people but they all run scams.

Just a couple of examples out of thousands I've run across.

• Diclofenac is a generic anti-inflammatory, about the strength of ibuprofen. Usually a month's worth of pills is $4. They put generic diclofenac in a cream form 3% so about 2 dollars worth of the medication that is in pill form. They charge $7000 for a tube of it.
• Duexis is a pill with plain advil and pepcid in it. cheap over the counter medications. Duexis is $33 per pill as a prescription

I can go on for days if you want. would you buy a clothes line pin glued to a pencil sharpener for $5000? That is what the drug companies do.

They are literally not developing any more antibiotics because the profit margins are too small.

This is not being rewarded for ingenuity. This is taking advantage of a normal supply and demand competitive market and scamming everyone because their insurance costs are separated mentally to what they want to pay.

A huge reason we are all paying so much in healthcare costs is greedy scamming drug companies.

F them. They have taking a noble profession of creating drugs to help people, and used it to rip everyone off.

 

[L84Cabo]

This guy needs to be more consistent because I'm never sure if I love him or hate him.

 

[pharmseller]

They are literally not developing any more antibiotics because the profit margins are too small.

Sorry for cherrypicking, I just saw this and it's dinner time.

Of course they're not developing products they can't make money on.

You do understand business, right? Gotta turn a profit or the lights go out, right? Limited resources and such like, right? Publicly held companies kinda have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders but wait, let's spend a billion dollars (no joke) on a drug that won't make a sufficient return.

That's kinda how business works.

I'll respond to the rest tomorrow.

 

[bolus]

Sorry for cherrypicking, I just saw this and it's dinner time.

Of course they're not developing products they can't make money on.

You do understand business, right? Gotta turn a profit or the lights go out, right? Limited resources and such like, right? Publicly held companies kinda have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders but wait, let's spend a billion dollars (no joke) on a drug that won't make a sufficient return.

That's kinda how business works.

I'll respond to the rest tomorrow.

There is no way you will justify their profit margins to me. They dont need 18% profit margins to generate new products when the rest of industry manages 3 %. They dont need x10 the prices as every other country in the world. Our the meds here 10 times as good? F no.

All the generics rolled into extended releases that do nothing else just generate a new patent? Combo pills that do nothing new. Are you a pharmacist? drug rep? WTF do we need an expensive extended release prednisone? Extended release xanax?

How about all the isomer patent BS? Nexium is the S isomer of prilosec so they get a new patent and charge x10 for the exact same molecule atom for atom?

Why does the price of stuff like prilosec drop like a rock when it goes over the counter and they actually have to compete for price? I'm looking up prices of brand prescription Prilosec right now and I see up to $4.45 a pill when the identical brand medication over the counter is $0.71 a pill. Is that because the brand prescription is 26 times as good as relieving heartburn and justifies the cost?

20 years of seeing my patients struggle with drug costs or go without and directly harmed as a result. So pharma charges way to much and then insurance wont cover. All so their execs can have private islands with underage slaves.

I should screw all this and start charging $1000 a visit. Who cares if patients cant afford it right? Screw them because greed is best. That's how business works right? people would sell their kids if it means paying me what every I want to save their life?

 

[pharmseller]

There is no way you will justify their profit margins to me. They dont need 18% profit margins to generate new products when the rest of industry manages 3 %. They dont need x10 the prices as every other country in the world. Our the meds here 10 times as good? F no.

All the generics rolled into extended releases that do nothing else just generate a new patent? Combo pills that do nothing new. Are you a pharmacist? drug rep? WTF do we need an expensive extended release prednisone? Extended release xanax?

How about all the isomer patent BS? Nexium is the S isomer of prilosec so they get a new patent and charge x10 for the exact same molecule atom for atom?

Why does the price of stuff like prilosec drop like a rock when it goes over the counter and they actually have to compete for price? I'm looking up prices of brand prescription Prilosec right now and I see up to $4.45 a pill when the identical brand medication over the counter is $0.71 a pill. Is that because the brand prescription is 26 times as good as relieving heartburn and justifies the cost?

20 years of seeing my patients struggle with drug costs or go without and directly harmed as a result. So pharma charges way to much and then insurance wont cover. All so their execs can have private islands with underage slaves.

I should screw all this and start charging $1000 a visit. Who cares if patients cant afford it right? Screw them because greed is best. That's how business works right? people would sell their kids if it means paying me what every I want to save their life?

Drug development costs big dollars. And keep in mind the prices drug companies charge have to recover expenses not only for that drug, but for every drug that doesn't make it to market.

Cost of drug development - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"A new study in 2020 estimated that the median cost of getting a new drug into the market was $985 million, and the average cost was $1.3 billion, which was much lower compared to previous studies, which have placed the average cost of drug development as $2.8 billion.[4]"​

And what happens when a promising compound gets to late-stage testing and creates a safety signal? All that money, hundreds of millions, literally down the tubes.

R&D expenditures as a percent of sales is high. Some sites claim nearly 30%. This one says 15%, but ranks it higher than any other industry.

R&D spending as a percentage of net sales

www.efpia.eu

Innovation isn't cheap. As far as the examples you mention, is anyone forcing people to buy a tube of diclofenac? Or prescription Pepcid?

And where is the healthcare dollar going? Hospitals account for a third of all spending and shocker, physicians and clinical services account for twice the spending as retail drugs, 20% compared to 10%.

Yep, about a dime of every dollar goes to drugs. Twenty cents or so goes to physicians and clinical services.

We're living longer, despite pee-poor health choices. And we're living longer because of new drugs. Think about your options to lower LDL in patients on maximally-tolerated statins and ezetimibe who still aren't at goal. What do you do to lower the risk of heart attack and/or stroke?

Before 2015 your options were limited, then came Repatha. It's a fricking miracle drug. Three years later we got Praluent, another drug in the class, which some say offers significant advantages over Repatha. Late last year we got another option and I'll be impressed if you know what it is.

Are they free? Nope. Do they help people live longer lives (often in spite of themselves)? Yep. Am I going to apologize for my industry? Nope. Does my industry do stupid stuff sometimes? Of course, name one industry (including your own) that doesn't step on it's own dìck on occasion.

I'm reminded of The Pharmacist tv series that uncovered abuse associated with prescription pain meds. A horrible exposé of Purdue to be sure, but wasn't it M.D.s doing the prescribing?

Yes, there are abuses, like any other industry. Get mad about a tube of diclofenac all you want. Just don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

[Flopsweat]

I just checked my prescriptions and all of them are cheaper there than my copay. I'm going to ask my GP what he thinks of this place.

 

[pharmseller]

It's great for generics but doesn't Wal Mart still have the $4 generic program?

 

[Hal OPeridol]

All my meds are free. Thank you for paying your taxes. (100% service connected VA disability).

I'd still rather have my health back.

 

[monkeybutler]

Those days are long past, at least for my segment of the market. Even back in the day I never got to enjoy the stuff you're talking about. I must have been working for the wrong company!

You are in sales, as your username suggests? Yeah then you would not have been exposed to what I was. We treated sales like dirt. I was in R+D. I will not go into some of the things I have experienced, but I will say that I never will work in pharma again.

 

[pharmseller]

You are in sales, as your username suggests? Yeah then you would not have been exposed to what I was. We treated sales like dirt. I was in R+D. I will not go into some of the things I have experienced, but I will say that I never will work in pharma again.

Yep, sales. Going on 25 years.

I never interacted with your ilk.