Here's a major scandal that is being ignored in the press:

[hedgehog]

the cost of some generics is going through the roof. I just picked up a bottle of Hydroxychloroquine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine

at the pharmacy. This is an anti-malarial also used to control autoimmune diseases such as lupus. The insurance company pays my pharmacist $30 a bottle. The distributor is now charging him $300 a bottle! This stuff has been around forever. Another one of my generics is seeing massive price increases as well. It sounds like collusion among all the pharmacy companies to me.

[antiquie]

1. Some coverage

It's Time To End Pay For Delay

AN INDUSTRY-WIDE TACTIC—At least eight of the top 10 drug makers have paid off their competition to block generics from entering the market. The FTC estimates that pay for delay deals cost consumers and taxpayers $3.5 billion every year in higher drug prices.

Reform Update: Generic drugs' high prices spur fears of failed drug adherence October 9, 2014

[Cal33]

2. The Consumers' Financial Protection Bureau should hear about this. They could do something about it

[elehhhhna]

3. isnt this qn antitrust violation? restraint of trade?

[Brigid]

4. Try this:

http://www.healthwarehouse.com

I found it there for $16.51. I get my meds there; my clopedigrel is a fraction of what CVS charges.

[deafskeptic]

5. I remember when I was without insurance

That fenobibrate cost me about 500 dollars per bottle. That took a biiiig chunk out of my income.

[JayhawkSD]

6. Fewer manufacturers.

Many generics are being made by fewer manufacturers. The low prices were great for consumers, but the profit margin was not real great compared to patented madications. That was okay as long as there were relatively few drugs, but as more and more drugs were introduced to treat the same conditions, and generics of those drugs became possible when patents expired, the profit margins of those generics dropped lower and lower and the sales quantities of each one declined. As a result companies stopped making them. So where there had been as many as 8 or 10 companies making a generic, now there may be only 2 or 3 companies making it.

The "law of supply and demand" is completely bogus, though. A higher demand relative to supply allows the seller to raise the price, but it does not require him to do so, and it does not actually provide him with any rational justification for doing so. The only real justification for raising the selling price is an increase in the cost to the seller, and a higher demand does not increase the cost to the seller.

I don't have any numbers on what the profit margins are on generic drugs, but I strongly suspect that they were not low enough to force companies to stop making them. I believe that they were insufficient to satisfy the greed of those manufacturers.