The cost of EpiPen continues to rise

originally posted by: Bedlam
a reply to: rickymouse

Other countries aren't as litigious as the US, and I believe many have caps on medical liability payouts. So you can't really compare Canada to the US.

Pharma companies have excellent lawyers, your lucky if you get any money from them, you have to prove that the medicine caused the problem.

They are liable for the purity and for the injector properly working, but the epi-pen does not always work for everyone and it has side effects that are well noted. Being an essential emergency medicine, they have limited liability.

This type of medicine has less of a chance of someone winning a lawsuit. The FDA regulations actually protect Pharma companies against liability pretty well, especially if the med has been around for a while. I did quite a bit of reading on the FDA site about liability of medicines a while back.

This fits the topic about kids with allergies:

Its only the auto injector system that is patented, ive read you can get the drug inside cheap online.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: rickymouse

Until you need chemo for cancer. Got a coupon for that one?

rebates.com...

a reply to: rickymouse

Great info.

originally posted by: Bedlam
What are you guys paying for epipens, anyway? That $600 each number is patently ridiculous.

My local Walmart pharmacy has the Epipen jr. for $683.47. The adult version is over $700.00.

EpiPen, which delivers about $1 worth of the hormone epinephrine, on a run that has resulted in its becoming a $1 billion-a-year product that far outpaces its rivals and provides about 40% of Mylan’s operating profits, says researcher ABR|Healthco. EpiPen margins were 55% in 2014, up from 9% in 2008, ABR|Healthco estimates.

more

The generic equivalent is due to release in 2017..but until then, epipen will have control of the market here in the states. Comparatively, in France, where they have some competition from a company called Meda, a 2 pack only costs $85.. here the cost is around $415..

There are some coupons and ways to get them free

So, hopefully, next year, the costs will come down..

Thanks,
blend57

originally posted by: Discotech
a reply to: Bedlam

Usually when a company encounters low sales they either lower the price of the product or lower production.

They don't jack the price up 400%, that usually puts a company out of business

BUT when you own the monopoly on a product you can do whatever you like with very little risk

One of the problems with patents and corporations when it comes to the whole industry of saving lives where profit is more important than lives saved

This is not always the case.

Lowering price only works for products in which demand is primarily driven by price. Some products like medicines and others have a limited market. No amount of lowering the price will boost demand because the users either want the drug or they don't. Price is a secondary factor.

For example, an airline might lower prices to encourage people to fly. Once price goes down, many consumers may come into the market who may not have considered flying.

On the other hand, medicines have a limited market. The purchase decision is driven by need, not price. No one says, "wow, they have a buy one, get one free sale on Epipen's at Walgreens..." The purchasers of epipens either need them or they don't. If I don't have allergic reactions, epipens could be free but I still won't buy them.

The problem with pharamceuticals is that is cost a boat load of money to develop them and the market for the drugs can be very limited. For example, some diseases may only have like a few hundred people globally who need the medicine but it could costs tens of millions of dollars to develop a drug for the disease.

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

See my threads on the fact that I want a diabetes cure NOW! Insulin was $14/1 bottle of 10ml or 1000 international units, at 100 units per ml. The price is now over $180 a bottle NOW! I go through about 5 bottles a month. BIg-pharma NEVER intends to cure any disease. I'm sure there are a few good doctors out there that want to get diseases cured, but none of the cures are ever approved. I'm thinking specifically of cancer cures that have come about and been stopped by FDA. This goes for every disease that makes lots of money...

a reply to: Edumakated

We are told if the prices are lowered they will have no cash for R and D.

So shut up, pay up and remember the more expensive the drug is the faster the miracle cure will happen. Right?

a reply to: TheAmazingYeti

Consider too, that the US is the only country that requires by law the use of the HFA propellant in albuterol and other asthma/COPD inhalers...and the amount of those diagnoses have skyrocketed in recent years.

Used to be able to purchase a generic albuterol inhaler for around $20, but when they changed propellants, they got a new patent too. Now, there is no generic on the market. ProAir HFA is the least expensive without prescription insurance, costing between $50-60 per unit(either a 15 or 30 day supply, depending on the dosage)...most people who cannot afford health insurance cannot possibly afford that rescue inhaler...and without it are playing Russian roulette with their lives.

There used to be an OTC inhaler called Primateme Mist, which was basically epinephrine. It cost around $10 and had a lot of medicine in the canister. But the FDA banned it not too long ago, citing accidental overdose statistics, among the top reasons. So there's not even that emergency option for people anymore.

Now consider the fact that most acute, life-threatening asthma attacks...the kind that kill people every single day in this country...are the direct result of some irritant entering the airway, causing an exaggerated histamine or leukotriene response, and that irritant is almost always an airborne allergen or hypersensitivity to an airborne contaminant. Add in that the overwhelming majority of asthma sufferers are also afflicted with an unpredictable, hypersensitive immune response to both chemical and natural irritants, from both airborne and skin barrier vectors, and you've got a whole lot of people without access to life-saving medication, should they suffer an acute attack that closes their airway within a matter of minutes.

Now, we've got the situation with the Epi-pen as well...which is also a prescription-exclusive medication that asthma patients are strongly advised to carry at all times, in case their rescue inhaler does not open the airway in an emergency. Now they're walking time bombs, with a life-threatening disease and absolutely no access to rescue medications of ANY kind.

Big Pharma is a reality, whether people want to believe it or not. There is a veritable treasure trove of profit to be had by making people dependent on medication, making them easier to control...and the most efficient means of success is by making the treatment difficult to obtain and severely limiting alternative options, forcing people to spend ridiculous amounts of money for the magic elixirs that make their symptoms abate...or suffer.

Of course, this would mean that they are somehow causing vast numbers of the population to become sick enough to require the meds in the first place. Nobody likes to hear about chemtrails but within this context they are pertinent, with regard to a possible vector for both airborne and skin permeable agents in an aerosol delivery system.

By deliberately poisoning our air on a controlled schedule, they could most definitely create specific sets of chronic, severe symptoms that require sufferers to depend upon them, even to the degree that their very existence requires it, for the duration of their lifespan. This would also mean that our government is in on it...or even directly funding it.

If that sounds outlandish to anyone, consider the fact that the FDA, which regulates all of our drugs...and decides what is or is not classified as a drug, too, is a government agency. They have direct control over what drugs are approved for sale, both prescription and OTC. And they also perpetually have Big Pharma by the balls, because they cannot make money if they cannot sell their product.

In a hypothetical scenario where the government seeks to have total control over the population in every way possible, making them dependent upon substances is a highly efficient means by which to facilitate that outcome. And if anyone doubts that, ask someone who has been in emergent respiratory distress without rescue medication how grateful they were for EMS personnel being able to provide it...and ask them how willing they'd be to find themselves in such a life-threatening situation again after having experienced it and living to tell about it.

The pharmaceutical industry absolutely is out to make money, and it is entirely plausible (and logical, considering that an herb which grows in the ground and effectively treats a plethora of ailments without any damaging side effects or risk of toxicity is still, in the year 2016, largely illegal) that a corrupt government would take full advantage of that fact, and so form a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. Fund the mass production of a blank synthetic vector which can be aerosolized or dissolved, and tailored to a variety of specific symptom sets. Then, fund the production of medications which control the severity of those symptoms...not anything that'll actually cure anyone, mind you, simply keep symptoms at bay; after all, it's actually the symptoms that kill people...the disease is simply the delivery system.

Look at the impact upon millions of people of just this one example you've brought to light here. Imagine the deaths that would result, all around the country, if the same thing happened with insulin, or cardiac medications, or blood thinners, or any number of other drugs out there that are literally keeping people alive from one day to the next, by controlling symptoms that would otherwise kill them.

If it is by this design that our healthcare system operates unbeknownst to the public, other things start to fit in. For example, almost every symptom of major autoimmune disorders like fibromyalgia, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis are also symptoms of chronic aluminum and other heavy metal poisoning...and they're being newly diagnosed at a rapid rate as more and more people present to their physicians with these specific symptom sets.

It was not all that long ago, either, that the medical community in general dismissed fibromyalgia as a make-believe illness created to explain away certain baffling, recurring, specific symptom sets. Well...it kind of was exactly that...because those symptoms were consistent with those of several other known autoimmune disorders, triggered by the same gene activation, yet clearly was something completely new. The same thing happened with regard to lupus, years before that...and medical science still cannot identify precisely what causes any of them. But sufferers can live a normal lifespan...they just have to take "maintenance medication" for the rest of their lives.

Some other fun facts:

*Prescription allergy and other "maintenance" drugs are being released for OTC purchase in droves. Yet there has never been an approved albuterol inhaler nor Epi-pen made available OTC...safe, reliable, widely used medicines which are specifically designed to save people from dying of one of the most common, preventable causes of death in this country are 100% only available by prescription...and at a price that most people cannot afford to pay.

* Prescription medications all have lengthy lists of side effects...in fact, honest docs will admit that often, the side effects are more severe than what they're designed to treat. The answer? Give them yet another drug for the side effects of the first one. This is very common.

There's more, but I've already been long-winded enough, I think.

originally posted by: anton74

originally posted by: Bedlam
What are you guys paying for epipens, anyway? That $600 each number is patently ridiculous.

My local Walmart pharmacy has the Epipen jr. for $683.47. The adult version is over $700.00.

My apocalypse pharmacy has it without a script for $149.50, if you buy 3.

originally posted by: blend57

So, hopefully, next year, the costs will come down..

Thanks,
blend57

In the meantime, just buy them here.

With the rising number of individuals with peanut allergies, plus bee stings during the summer months, I can't picture the need for epi-pen or the production numbers going down.

My first thought is that epi-pen is about to be made available in a generic form soon and the manufacturer wants to wring out the maximum amount of dollars from the product before that happens.

Bedlam

I don't have a need for one..was just looking to help if I could really. It is good that you are doing the same..$112 is better than $400-600 any day..

Thanks,
blend57

originally posted by: blend57
Bedlam

I don't have a need for one..was just looking to help if I could really. It is good that you are doing the same..$112 is better than $400-600 any day..

Thanks,
blend57

I have often gotten meds for this or that from overseas. Depending on if I had a prescription, if not inhouse can get nearly anything non-opioid. Never had the first issue.

At my pharmacy in Canada, the pharmacist offers to sell you the soon to expire pens at $50.00 a pen IF you have a history of frequent enough emergency use. Otherwise, the pen is about $110.00 with a prescription.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: rickymouse

Until you need chemo for cancer. Got a coupon for that one?

Nah mate, got socialized healthcare like the rest of the civilized world

a reply to: GetHyped

Here in the US we are told to run in fear from a single payer system. Because they have death panels, LONG wait times, Dr.s stop being Dr.s and care is horrible. What is your experiences?