The cost of medication is criminal

I have a severe illness and I've been on the same medication for 20 years. I've been taking it since it first hit the market in 1997.

When a drug maker comes out with a medication the patent only lasts so many years. I'm not sure I think it's 15 years or so. After the patent runs out companies can start making a generic.

Eli Lilly makes my medication. When my medication was still under patent it cost $10 a pill or $300 for a months supply.

The patent ran out a couple of years ago and my medication went from $300 to $900 for the non generic and $600 for the generic. Eli Lilly owns the rights to the non generic and the generic. They make both and are price fixing. The generic now cost double what the name brand use to and the name brand tripled in price.

This is so crooked it's not funny.

a reply to: wantsome
My wife has a particular type of cancer that does not respond to traditional therapies. Which means, in layman's terms, that she just dies. She was given 6 months to live.

That was 5 years ago. I am ashamed but happy to say that she went from obese to outrunning a combat vet.

My advice is to look at an alternative to your medication. Hers, for instance, was carrots.

How much money can these people make off of a carrot. Simple answer... nothing.

Research your disease or condition. Find out if it's just a symptom, like cancer is just a symptom. Then find a way to fix it.

Pharmaceutical companies are not interested in curing anything. What they are REALLY interested in is addicts. To their product.

It is going to get worse yet. Remember, the chemicals that go in our foods can necessitate medicines to correct their use a decade or more down the line.

I think we should investigate the link between companies that make chemicals to add to food or process foods and the Pharmaceutical manufacturers. Also, investigate false information let out through the years that made us get diseases and try to find out where this information originated from and if their were ties to pharma companies.. The lies about caffeinated coffee, eggs, butter, and other things being bad for us caused research to only be done in the direction they wanted us to look in. Who set that practice in motion

I think that there were some groups out there that purposely steered us away from things so we would later have problems and need intensive health care.

a reply to: wantsome

Health is a luxury shared only by the rich and privileged. It's probably not an accident..

I have a debilitating condition (I've mentioned a couple times on ATS,) that I can't really afford to treat anymore. By the time you factor in doctor visits, tests, prescriptions etc I'm going for broke.

Frankly, this criminal world can go and get stuffed. Glad I won't be here for it.

a reply to: GreyScale

When I was diagnosed with this illness at age 20 the doctors told my mom I would never have a normal life. My long term prognoses was very poor. This medication has given me a quality of life no one ever thought I'd have. I'm not saying alternative medicine don't work but the drug I take has made a serious impact. So much so if there ever came a time I couldn't get it I would do myself in rather then get sick again. I quit taking this medication before and getting sick again set me back a couple of years. I've tried a lot of other medications over the years and I went down hill quick. I just didn't react well to them. The medication I take now is slowly killing me. It's messing my liver and kidneys up. I'm only 40 years old and I'm willing to bet I won't see 50. I would rather die an early death then get sick from my illness. The FDA was aware of the health risks associated with this medication before it hit the market. They knew is shortened lifespans but the benefit outweighed the risks.

a reply to: wantsome

The rationale, I believe, is in paying for new research and medication. My daughter is a research scientist for a pharmaceutical company making designer medications from the sick persons own cells. Their stuff hasn't been FDA approved yet. Right now, at a low estimate it costs the company about 100k per cell. The patient needs 1000s of these new designer/healthy cells to get better.

The system is broken. They need for find money from places other than sick people buying their FDA approved medications to fund this research.

a reply to: wantsome
I honestly have to say that for every medication that is out there, there is a better natural one. For the record, I'm not some tree-hugging hippie that eats wheat curd and lives off of organics. I'm a mechanic that sometimes washes himself with brake cleaner before he comes home. I'm a walking test-tube of what not to do.

THAT being said, I've seen some remarkable (like impossible) things that have been done with natural cures. Especially essential oils.

I watched my wife cure herself from something that cannot be cured by modern medicine. Then I've watched her cure others too.

So just saying, look into something other than the modern medicine cure for what you have.

Or not... the choice is always up to the person living it.

a reply to: GreyScale

dude i love your carrot story!
it is now part of an email i send to anyone who is dealing with the big c.

a reply to: dantanna

Oddly enough, some people have cured their cancer with carrot juice alone.

Ann Cameron is one. There are others. I wouldn't recommend it as a primary attack on cancer, but for some it has worked.

However, it just goes to show how ignorant we are about cancer.

If we are that ignorant about that symptom, how far are we led astray on other diseases/symptoms?

Modern medicine is all about the money. That statement isn't even a conspiracy theory. It's a fact.

What a shame.

a reply to: wantsome

As posted in a previous thread.

Chemo medicines (international prices, in US dollars):

Cisplatin = $19.67 per 50ml.
Etoposide = $6.11 per 50 ml.
Prednisone (chemotherapy steroid) = $49 per 30 ml.
Zofran (anti nausea) one 4mg pill = 0.80 cents.

1 day of treatment with the afore-mentioned drugs in the US = $30,000.00

Crime - yup.

a reply to: chr0naut

My cancer treatments cost insurance companies well over a cool million. No exaggeration

a reply to: wantsome

Your defeatest attitude is what is wrong with america. The pacifists that reply to my post are even worse.

a reply to: rickymouse

If you learned to rely on yourself? Would you have even needed my reply

a reply to: Aeshma

What do you mean by defeatest attitude? I don't know what you're saying?

We're not a culture of kindness and humanitarianism, no matter what people claim in the US. Occasional check-out line or organization donation charity is just a feel-good band-aid to cover up how rotten to the core our culture is. We applaud and encourage milking the sick for every last dime, while rubbing in how worthless they are for not doing XYZ or affording ABC.

We suck, and it starts at the everyday Joe level, not companies alone.

originally posted by: Aeshma
a reply to: wantsome

Your defeatest attitude is what is wrong with america. The pacifists that reply to my post are even worse.

Care to explain, lest you come off as an insensitive prick to an ill person?

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: wantsome

As posted in a previous thread.

Chemo medicines (international prices, in US dollars):

Cisplatin = $19.67 per 50ml.
Etoposide = $6.11 per 50 ml.
Prednisone (chemotherapy steroid) = $49 per 30 ml.
Zofran (anti nausea) one 4mg pill = 0.80 cents.

1 day of treatment with the afore-mentioned drugs in the US = $30,000.00

Crime - yup.

It's criminal that Congress is investigating wiretapping and phone conversations that affect none of us, while insanely high medicine prices, and restrictions on importing, affect all of us...sooner or later.

originally posted by: wantsome
I have a severe illness and I've been on the same medication for 20 years. I've been taking it since it first hit the market in 1997.

When a drug maker comes out with a medication the patent only lasts so many years. I'm not sure I think it's 15 years or so. After the patent runs out companies can start making a generic.

Eli Lilly makes my medication. When my medication was still under patent it cost $10 a pill or $300 for a months supply.

The patent ran out a couple of years ago and my medication went from $300 to $900 for the non generic and $600 for the generic. Eli Lilly owns the rights to the non generic and the generic. They make both and are price fixing. The generic now cost double what the name brand use to and the name brand tripled in price.

This is so crooked it's not funny.

I too am on medication for life and this is nothing short of medical extortion, looting of health care users. if you like.

It is however, capitalism at work, supply and demand, what the market will bear etc. This approach however ought to teach people that the govt claim that they are concernd for the personal safety of all Americians, hence all the freedom and rights destorying laws, is not matched by their lack of concern for their health (or for their financial security either).

Therefore, Americians and everybody else needs to wake up to the fact that govt regards non wealthy people as simply rubbish and a source of tax income.

When automation and robots in particlaur really start to rack up results non welathy people will then find out just how dispensible they are.

a reply to: GreyScale

Are you saying carrots defeated your wife's cancer?

a reply to: noonebutme

Depending on her personal biology, why not?
Cancer from what I understand is your body's cells going haywire because your personal biology is out of whack. (the simple answer)

I'm not a rocket scientist, but I have had to go 10yrs without healthcare. It's been interesting in learning home remedies and treating my emergent drama's with whatever will work that I can find instead of calling my Doc. Don't get me wrong, for my pneumonia I definitely made a call for antibiotics. But so far I have to agree with RickyMouse and everyone else who is following an alternative path.

Like GrayScale I'm NOT the poster child for healthy living, but once I notice something going wrong I try to get a handle on it and it's back to somewhat better eating an whatever I can find on the net to address it.

Treating symptoms isn't my thing, if you can't get to the root of the problem then you aren't helping.

I'm very sorry for you NB and Wantsome! Chronic conditions are wearing and difficult to live with day to day. I truly am sorry.

a reply to: wantsome



Sorry for your problem, being in the UK it is easy for me, but strangely

enough the TV is on the background while I am typing this post and they

are discussing the buying of tablets on line.


Here in the UK we cannot get antibiotics or abortion pills without a

perscription or even from a chemist without a perscription but they

are available on line?


Another option perhaps on buying on line would possibly be buying the

basic ingriedents as listed on the packets and mixing them in correct

balance?

Just throwing out an idea ........