Drug Prices Defy Gravity, Doubling for Dozens of Products

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-30/drug-prices-defy-gravity-doubling-for-dozens-of-products.html

Earl Harford, a retired professor, recently bought a month’s worth of the pills he needs to keep his leukemia at bay. The cost: $7,676, or three times more than when he first began taking the pills in 2001. Over the years, he has paid more than $140,000 from his retirement savings to cover his share of the drug’s price.

“People with this condition are being taken advantage of by the pharmaceutical industry,” said Harford, 84, of Tucson, Arizona. “They haven’t improved the drug; they haven’t done anything but keep manufacturing it. How do they justify it?”

As the pharmaceutical industry, led by Pfizer Inc.’s proposed $100 billion takeover of AstraZeneca Plc, is in the throes of the greatest period of consolidation in a decade, one reality remains unchanged: Drug prices keep defying the law of gravity.

Since 2007, the cost of brand-name medicines has surged, with prices doubling for dozens of established drugs that target everything from multiple sclerosis to cancer, blood pressure and even erections, according to an analysis conducted for Bloomberg News. While the consumer price index rose just 12 percent in the period, one diabetes drug quadrupled in price and another rose by 160 percent, according to the analysis by Los-Angeles based DRX, a provider of comparison software for health plans.

[beerandjesus]

1. Thanks, Obama!

[SomethingFishy]

6. Yeah fuck that guy for complaining about a $7000 a month prescription...

Because the first thing he did was blame Obama..

Nice, really.

[beerandjesus]

9. Yeah, the fact that Obama isn't even mentioned in that article....

...probably makes it the most honest thing about health care I've read this year.


It's absolutely incredible to me how people continue to blame Obamacare for shit like this. The guy's prescription costs have tripled over the last 10 years, and that's because of a law passed 4 years ago....? The willful ignorance is astounding.

[Pharaoh]

2. where is the magic hand of the free market capitalism?

and where are the generics for that drug?

[pscot]

3. They went down the drain along with drug re-importation

and single payer.

[infidel dog]

4. Isn't for-profit healthcare a beautiful thing? Makes me so proud to be a Murrikan.

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. Nationalize the pharmaceutical companies.

[Archae]

7. The cheaper alternative is...

Woo!

[xchrom]

8. !