The cost of prescription drugs is outrageous in many aspects. How some of the elderly and lower income familes afford these I really have no idea. And yet drug companies reap the benefits of these prices in the form of profits.
Recently the drug Coreg came out generically. Prior to this, Coreg was a rather expensive medication costing in the neighborhood of $100.00 a month.
Two weeks ago the generic equivalent, Carvedilol, came to market. When I first looked at the invoice I thought my eyes were deceiving me. It not costs patients just $5.00 a month for this exact same medication.
Oh but it gets better. A few months before the generic release came Coreg CR... just a long acting form of the same drug. Once again, the monthly cost of the drug is in the three figures, yet you can receive essentially the same drug for a mere five bucks.
Where the hell is the logic behind this? Getting into this industry I thought that the point of all of this was to help people, not to pad pockets. Makes you wonder just where the hell all that money ends up...
2 comments:
All that money goes to paying for the cost to develop that drug. Thats why pharmaceutical companies get exclusive rights for so long, to recoup the costs of developing the drug. Now, the question you have to wonder, is there a need for all of these drugs? We get all these pills for shit we don't even know we have brainwashing us. I don't even enjoy taking a rolaid when I have heartburn...
Only a small portion of the revenue is used to recoup research costs; a large amount is spent on advertising. When Vioxx was still on the market, Merck spent at least $100 million on direct to consumer advertising in 2003 alone in the United States.
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