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Pfizer to price Covid drug Paxlovid at $1,390 per course
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![r/NBCauto - [Health] - Pfizer to price Covid drug Paxlovid at $1,390 per course](http://web.archive.org./web/20240912234131im_/https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/-u3OxKMNF0c3SoKA9DaTKKh1YcO76Fw1pG9HwnOSI_A.jpg)
![r/WSJauto - [World] - Pfizer Prices Covid Drug Paxlovid at $1,400 for a Five-Day Course](http://web.archive.org./web/20240912234131im_/https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/0fkJO15TWzgLd0AVrIkEYOSdq1dAFBQ4BAo-qHZdK2s.jpg)
To say that it will cost very little out of pocket is leaving out something important. Drug prices like these are one of the reasons we get ripped off on premiums.
Exactly. This is the real problem in healthcare. These assholes.
Unfortunately medication cost is probably lower on the list of culprits after: a Byzantine insurance system, artificially suppressed number of doctors, and administrative bloat.
Edit: Looks like prescriptions are 18% of healthcare cost in the US. Significant, and they should be cheaper, but less than many people think.
The healthcare system has our society in a stranglehold.
We are bound to our employer for healthcare. How does that makes sense in a mobile economy.
America doesn't have a health care system. It has markets.
Markets for financing health coverage, markets for buying health care services and goods, markets for selling health care services and goods, markets for generating health care services and goods invoices, markets for paying and collecting health care services and goods bills, and aftermarkets for consumer-driving in reverse gear if you're an end-use health care customer of all of that.
Ted Nugent strikes again
They posted a $66B profit last year.
The fact that medical boards and schools intentionally restrict student numbers to drive up wages should be criminal.
And that there are scores of students who are unable to get residencies after finishing school.
Schools are under regulatory requirements for staff-to-student ratios.
Nursing schools in particular are under the same staffing shortage as hospitals. It's not that they want to turn students away, it's that they have been unable to hire the required staff to expand their programs.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/business/nursing-staff-shortage-school-enrollment/index.html
I mean...
That seems like a very anti-labor sentiment, and how would you even make that illegal? Numbers have gone up a good amount in the past few years, your just always gonna have a limited pool.
Residency is the bigger issue iirc
Comment deleted by user
You can get regular old insulin any time you want for nearly production cost at basically any pharmacy in the US. In most states even without a prescription.
If you want the new fancy shit developed in the past couple decades - yep, you get to pay way more than reasonable.
Modern insulin pricing has nothing to do with the original Banting, Collip and Best patent, and literally nothing to do with some single inventors death. It's also not how any patents work to begin with. Otherwise you'd see a whole hell of a lot more industrial assassinations.
Things are bad enough without having to literally make shit up.
Don’t forget how badly needed tort reform is!
Lol what? No. They are definitely a problem, but the biggest problem with our shit system is the unnecessary middle men.
That’s definitely not the price it’s sold internationally. Would love to know the difference.
Also, iirc, Pfizer took public money to develop this. They should be forced to pay back the money they took at student loan interest rates.
Edits because more specificity was required:
I’ll take every opportunity to say it, I once had an IV medication that cost $1500 per vial and the doctor’s office negotiated the price with my insurance at $90,000 per vial. (This was out of network so I was charged by the doctors office, then I received a reimbursement check from insurance. Insurance agreed to pay the full price for the medication, treatment was a separate cost which was covered at the usual rate). I was concerned I’d be left with the difference when the insurance company found out (ie realized they made a mistake or something) so I called them and asked them about it and they told me that the doctor could literally charge any number he wanted *and they’d pay it as long as they had preapproved that contracted price. There were no rules or boundaries though to how much they were charging over the list price. (I thought the doctors office was just putting the service charge in with the medication but was assured multiple times by both insurance and doctor that this was purely for the medication. I have recorded calls and written documentation from both insurance and doctor side confirming all of this. Furthermore this was a new medication and the patients were all talking about it together. Everyone had the same experience with the price of the medication).
My opinion: That doctor just got disgustingly wealthy giving this medication to patients. And this also meant that he was deeply incentivized to tell patients they needed it when they might not.
The Insurance system is a complete scam in ways that I never would have imagined.
*ETA the part where the insurance company said they’d cover whatever the charge was because they’d approved the treatment.
Edit 2: i wonder what benefit i would get for making this up lol. Ah Reddit. Anyway, the doctors office was a private practice and they contracted this price with insurance. My question to the insurance company was how they were allowed to charge that much extra. Their answer to that was simply that they could name any price they wanted and make an agreement with the insurer. The only reason I cared was that the doctor was out of network meaning the insurance company sent me the checks in my name and I had to sign those checks over to the doctor in his name.
No, it wasn’t some fake insurance company, it was one of the major three in the US, and no the doctor was not just some random quack. He was very respected in the industry. This is a major US city.
I’d love to hear what someone who’s worked in insurance thinks happened if they can accept these facts. Because I thought it was fraudulent enough to have the insurance company investigate beforehand.
Doctor can charge what he wants... And the insurance company can reimburse what they want.
Vendor can charge what the "contracted rate" is with regard to the insurance reimbursement scheme vendor agreed to take/accept/participate in. Payer can pay the "contracted rate" agreed upon with the vendor or nothing at all.
Thats... not how it works. The pharmacy or hospital charges whatever they want, but are only re-imbursed at the pre-negotiated price.
Is it a scam? Yeah-ish. Are patients in the US getting screwed? Yes, definitely. Is what you're saying an accurate representation of how the system works? No, not at all.
There is a big difference between the list price (what the pharma companies publicly announce the price is), their revenue (what they are *actually* paid for the drug by middle men), the billed price (the $ pharmacies and hospitals, bill insurance for) and the reimbursed price (the pre-negotiate price insurance companies actually pay out to the pharmacies/hospitals).
It's a convoluted and broken system, full of bloat and middlemen. But it's not what you described.
I’ve spent an excessive amount on veterinary care, but pricing is a small fraction of cost in humans (with same drugs).
Is that a reasonable proxy for the overhead in the health care system? Or is some amount of the 10x+ markup worth it?
I know prices on any bills I see are more or less pointless, and see a lot of bills at hospitals charged out for a fraction of nominal cost.
This is a great example why American will never understand what tf is wrong with US healthcare. Precisely because people can just say things and everyone will believe it and found “someone” to blame.
The doctors can ask for whatever he wants, sure. But your insurance is not actually going to pay anything beyond what’s pre-negotiated. Every once in a while a practice has to negotiate prices, usually in bulk, with the insurance company to decide reimbursement for what they do, and it’s a very very VERY tedious process that takes literal extra human force to do and hence will increase administrative cost to do, and guess who has to pay for all the extra administrative cost eventually? That’s right, your premium.
There is also an extra nuance to this discussion which is that private small group physicians is becoming harder to survive on their own nowadays because insurance are less incentivized to give small groups a competitive reimbursement, vs say if they negotiate with a huge network with multiple large hospitals and bought multiple specialty practices that span across an entire state.
But I agree with you that it’s insane that there is a lack of standardization of any sort and everything is “negotiable”, which ultimate will ends up increasing admin cost because both side have to hire and pay a whole bunch of people to “talk price”, and…. you guess it, it all goes back to our premiums. (I mean technically there is “some” standard which is essentially Medicare, and insurance company follows very very closely to how Medicare decides to reimburse different services frequently, and those changes will heavily influence how much they are willing to pay for those services). It’s just so fucking complex and convoluted that I honestly don’t think we will get out of this easily, and there will be a tipping point where we all just crash and burn together.
Yes I don’t know why anything I’ve said negates the fact that this was pre-negotiated. Of course it was pre-negotiated. I talked to the person directly who negotiated it. It was simply a matter of making the case to the insurance company and it didn’t take much at all. I talked to a lot of people at the insurance company about this because it seems so sketchy but nobody could tell me why they were agreeing to such a massive over charge, and their answer with simply that they can pretty much charge whatever they want. Those are the words of the random customer service managers that I talked to.
As for covering their overhead costs, I definitely understand that. Thing is, this medication wasn’t a one time dosage. The course of treatment was eight vials. He had about 10 patients taking the treatment any given time. He also perform multiple surgeries every week
You didn't talk with the person who negotiated it. The contracting team aren't member facing.
That’s not how it works at all. Stop making up stories. The hospital is paid based on the contractual agreement. In addition, if you got this medication in the hospital, the doctor likely got nothing. The hospital charged the insurance company for the medication.
It wasn’t a hospital. They weren’t paid by the insurance company at all. I was charged. The insurance company sent me a reimbursement check. Since I didn’t have $90k lying around, that check was signed over to the doctor, in his name, as directed by the insurance company. It was a new drug, this doctor was on the board that got the drug approved, so there was no preapproved price before they negotiated it. Yes this is only the price for the drug, not for any procedure. I raised a stink with the insurance company to investigate this and after reviewing they assured me everything was fine. They told me that there really wasn’t a limit to how much the doctors office negotiated the price to be even if it was well above the list price. This is why I posted about it. It seems really messed up.
I’m simply stating what happened. I’m only sharing the facts, and leaving out extra nuance. I have recorded conversations and documentation and dealt with this for months.
So if you know how all this works, I’d love to hear what you think the reasoning was. Is it about a market rate being different from a list price? It still seems excessive even for that.
As someone who used to work in health insurance, this isn't remotely accurate. Sure, anyone can defraud an insurer or customers for a little while and get away with it. But "they'll pay whatever he wants" is just silly.
I feel like I’ve edited that post twice now and made it really clear that this was the approved price and when they said they could charge whatever they wanted was referring to the fact that there is no limit or guideline of how much they can overcharge from the list price. Maybe I need to edit it again to make that more clear, I wouldn’t have imagined people would think anything else.
That's not at all how it works. The number your doctor billed the insurance company is completely made up. It has utterly nothing to do with the check insurance will cut a month or three later. I mean utterly nothing.
He might have got $90k, or he might have been paid less than the cost of the drug itself or even nothing at all. You have no idea. It really depends on a whole bunch of stuff no insurance rep you call at a support desk would have a clue about.
The prices patients see on any bills or explanations of benefits are entirely fictional and have nothing to do with the sums of money deposited between bank accounts.
Some practices have found those insurance loopholes - so perhaps your doctor was one of the grifters exploiting an opportunity. But a number on a bill really means utterly nothing.
the doctor can bill the insurance company whatever he likes, they'll end up paying him only what they want to, and you'll end up paying what they say you need to pay. this is exactly why price transparency isn't this panacea that centrists insist it is as the prices don't matter anyways because the price is never actually the price.
I'm not going to straight up call you a liar, but without clear evidence (which I'm 100% certain you can't provide. Not because you don't have any, but because the amount of evidence to satisfy me would be a lot that you would have no business having), I'm more inclined to believe that you simply misunderstood what was being said.
For example, could I believe that a $1500 vial of medicine was being billed at $90,000, which was the negotiated rate with the insurance company? Yes.
Could I believe that the doctor in question just charged whatever he felt like whenever he wanted? No.
Because that's not how insurance companies work. The whole point is that they have "negotiated rates" so they can include doctors in their networks, which makes them more appealing to patients. And this is why out of network costs so much. Because they want to incentive you to stay in network.
And insurance companies don't get rich by giving big payouts either. They get rich by denying as much coverage as possible and recommending cheaper alternatives (for them). So the idea that they would just pay out $90k to this guy when some other doctor could give it to you for way less just absolutely beggars belief.
Is it possible that you lived in a very niche at of circumstances? Yeah, I guess so. But it seems more likely to me that you simply misunderstood something. Or you're a liar.
Why would I care if you think I’m lying? Why would I lie? I dealt with this for months. It doesn’t matter if some rando on Reddit thinks it sounds wrong. You are all just agreeing with me. It seemed fishy. That’s the entire point. SMH. You guys are something else
Had a similar experience and eventually left the practice because it freaked me out.
This makes ZERO sense. I worked for a hospital years ago and every single procedure and medication and treatment has a negotiated rate. Suuuure I could bill insurance $9,000,000,875.35 for treatment, but we were going to get paid the negotiated rate of $176 each and every time.
This is such a made up story it’s kinda funny.
Bro stop posting about shit you know nothing about. It's like hearing rednecks talk about vaccines or something. If the insurance companies were actually paying $90k per vial then we'd all be paying like 2k in premiums. Come on.
And both the corporate Democrats and Republicans take contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, besides the parasitic health insurance industry, and link arms to pass legislation in favor of the extortion prices for bullshit drugs, with research paid for by public funding.
Gotta over inflate the retail drug price to make health insurance seem worth it
It's almost like having for-profit insurance companies whose entire business model is finding every possible way to deny someone coverage isn't a good idea!
It's true - new drugs are very expensive to develop, and you won't get the infrastructure and employees necessary to do it properly for free - but there needs to be a balance between profits and benefits. Let them make a killing on totally cosmetic and elective stuff if there's no other way, but life-saving shit needs to be made available one way or another.
As is always the plan. Such a great system we have here. The best! /s
So frustrating. Having the pharmaceuticals expecting big payouts from the insurance companies drives the cost of drugs into the stratosphere.
It’s not just the drug companies. My sister was in the hospital having her second kid when she got a headache. They gave her 2 Tylenol. When they got the itemized bill they found out that were charged her 60 dollars for that.
i think if i saw that on my invoice i’d probably need to be billed for the blood pressure medication i’d be imminently needing. seriously, how the fuck have we as a society let this stuff progress to this point?
My fiancè had a c section and we were in the hospital for 4 nights. Our bill, for the room alone was $56,000 before insurance covered it all. On the itemized receipt it was listed as “semi-private half room”. I don’t even want to imagine what a decent room would cost there
I got a $75 bill for a preventative health shot. $500+ before insurance kicked in just for the nurse giving the shot.
Hospitals are fancy hotels and Doctors are fancy drug dealers.
At the end of the day, the cure can't find a cool name but got marketed as evil when it literally cures people: example: Smallpox vaccine.
Yeah the problem here is that it doesnt screw insurance companies. It screws people with self funded or no insurance.
So basically drug makers and insurance companies work out a deal so they pay almost nothing while giving the illusion that insurance is necessary and a great deal.
I don't know why, ok I do but that's not the point, the US gov't doesn't mandate that medical care and pharma care for the uninsured is priced at the lowest price agreed to with any insurance company. Hospital charges 25% off list price to an insurance company? Guess what, the uninsured also get 25% off.
Wouldn't help much. But would certainly make it easier for people to compare prices and shop around.
This isn't the rule but it's the practice. If you tell the doctor or hospital that you don't have insurance and will be paying cash you usually get a massive discount off the official price. They'd rather you pay something than get nothing.
this only happens if you fight and negotiate hard. it ends up being a lot of time and work to negotiate this.
And it often happens at a time when you're not in a great frame of mind to do it.
A weird, mind boggling system.
I think the US as a whole needs a revamp for pricing. How a country that doesn't have a generally have haggling system doesn't have better law's about list prices needing to be what you pay is kind of weird.
"BeCaUsE tHaTs SoCiAlisM"
I don’t think I understand what you’re saying? Medicaid (i.e., the poor and uninsured) reimburses at a much lower rate than private insurance, which is why medical facilities that have the choice (i.e., private ones) are so loathe to accept Medicaid patients.
Is your point that hospitals should only be able to charge anyone the lowest rate that an insurer reimburses at? If so… that’s asinine? Why would I ever pay for insurance if I can not pay and get the benefit?
Not anyone. Just anyone without insurance.
Forcing these awful companies into a "best pricing" practice would not be the worst thing to happen to health care. Not even close.
I was thinking this also but I realized that if the hospital has a list price of $1000 but charges insurance $100 you would only pay $10 out of pocket. If we had the above rule and you didn't get insurance you would pay the $100 price instead of the $10 price. Also insurance has an out of pocket maximum so if you get cancer you're only paying ~$4000 instead of whatever the real total would be
You just described part of the big problem with the current system -- it only works if everyone pays in, but those whom it is most important to have pay in (generally, young and healthy people) have little incentive to do so.
I am still waiting on that one orange guys healthcare plan to be announced
Do you think it's any different in other countries? I live in Canada, and prescription drugs still cost me 100-200 a month out of pocket, and would be 10x that without my job's insurance coverage.
Land of the fee. Home of the depraved.
Socialize research and losses, but privatize profits. God this country is so ‘effed.
Yeah. I believe our government should continue investing in drug development, but when this is the outcome its pretty discouraging. How do we stop this?
I think regulating drug costs versus research cost spent. If you cap cost to a certain percentage after r&d costs are met, and not allow it to exceed X% of the total cost to manufacture i think it would prevent this incessant price gouging. But that would go against the lobbyists and we all know they really run this country.
I like the idea of patents only lasting until x% over R&D cost. It guarantees profit margins/protection for the R&D while also allowing generics to jump into the market if it’s a highly successful drug. Only thing is that R&D costs might get inflated to further guarantee returns, but hey having more research funding isn’t the worst thing I guess.
I think this could also lead to more research lab/manufacturer specialization that would be beneficial for everyone on the whole. Research labs do the research and sell the rights to the manufacturer so that researchers can do research and manufacturers can make the drugs. It might already be like this, but I like the idea of splitting up incentives between the groups
RnD costs being inflated honestly wouldn't be a bad thing if it translated to better pay for the actual scientists rather than just the executive team or the shareholders.
You come out of a life science Ph.D after 6 years and potentially a post doc and the pay is.....a bit less than an entry level SWE.
I'd honestly drives a lot of smart people away from research because the economics just don't make sense.
Stop allowing new patents for older drugs with slight tweaks,
My question to a system like this is, who is going to fund drug development then? The risks associated with developing a drug through clinical trials are incredibly high and it’s crazy costly. If a drug fails in phase 2-3 and you’ve spent billions of venture capital dollars on drug development costs, are you getting reimbursed? Of course not. That situation is the most common in the industry and the vast majority of drugs fail. When discussing drug pricing, people don’t consider this piece and most small companies are funded by venture capitalists because they believe there’s a huge profit possible in the end. Without that, who will fund things? The government can’t fund drug development for every single possible disease out there. It can’t even fund the FDA properly so most people who work their leave after a few years to get paid in private industry because the salary and stress difference is absolutely insane.
By doing literally anything.
As a general matter, the US does nothing material to address this issue. Everyone hates it, but change is incredibly slow and incremental because of how complex it is.
One small change that would align incentives correctly is to not leave the patient holding the bag. Make it so that insurance companies can legally show you the price they will cover vs. procedures needed/offered. You accept that upfront. If there is confusion later: the insurance company eats the difference. Right now, the patient gets billed for any difference at the end, so neither medical care providers nor insurance companies are incentivized to be accurate or upfront. Because their failure to be accurate and upfront isn’t felt by them. Make them feel the pinch and overnight you’ll see a net shift.
There real answer is just painful for people to accept: a strong federal push for healthcare that costs the government a lot of money. It will be very expensive. But just like American healthcare now, the only way to figure out how much it costs is to do it and get billed later. We are also going to have to swallow that millions of people have delayed care because of cost, confusion, or anxiety about cost. Long term (like 2-3 generations deep) that spike levels off.
I’m earnestly surprised there is not more physical violence against the system and it’s participants. I am not calling for violence. I’m saying it surprised me that people are not radicalized when the system ravages their family, loved ones, and self. The amount of tastefully packaged disrespect people get from insurance and medical providers is staggering.
I’m not calling for violence. I’m calling for politicians to say, “enough is enough. Healthcare is free. It is administered by the state if you want it.” Maybe start small with something wide scale and lower likelihood of abuse, like insulin or cholesterol medication. You get diabetes, you get insulin for free. Free, free free free. The government absorbs the cost and confusion and billing and most importantly if the process is not efficient or has leftover unaccounted for billing: the government pays, not the patient.
Nationalized health care system like every other developed country
It’s one of the issues, the corporate Democrats and Republicans totally agree on supporting together; welfare for criminal corporations paid for by the working class
Bill Gates is masturbating furiously somewhere in delight.
you misspelled evil.
So once again the American Tax payer gets screwed. Our tax money is given to do the research and testing. The patents are given to the drug maker to do as they see fit and no one can sue them. They the drug companies turn around charge crazy prices for drugs to sell back to the American tax payers. Like what a sweet deal. Oh and many politicians have investments in drug companies. Strange how that all works out.
Seriously, I looked up the price for me here in germany. It's 60€ for 30 pills.
That is covered by your tax money so it's not a fair comparison.
A round of Paxilovid was about $400 in China this past summer (multiple older relatives got covid). Government sponsored insurance doesn't cover it so $400 is at most what Pfizer asked for. I think the hospitals got quite a bit of profit on this as well but I'm not sure how much. I'm sure it is very profitable at that price for Pfizer.
America healthcare system is by far the worst in any developed countries.
I live in Arizona, about half my medical industry friends go to Mexico for care, because its cheaper and better than what their own insurance of hospital would offer, especially for major dental work.
I've met loads of people traveling to and from Arizona over the years to cross the border for medical care.
I also know quite a few people take trip across the border a couple of times a year to buy medicine for the residents elder care community he used to donate to and support because they couldn't afford it due to the costs of elder care and our current social security and medicare/medicaid programs.
The same stories can be said of people on the northern border close to Canada. It should not be as common a practice or need in life to travel to another country to get healthcare because its cheaper than getting that care or those medicines locally.
Healthcare should not be a for profit industry and beholden to shareholders and stock values.
This is the same for most of those countries. If I had a wisdom teeth, it's cheaper for me to fly back home, have it extracted, spend a holiday home, and then come back, than doing it here. At least pre-covid.
A colleague just flew back to India for her procedure earlier this year. Because those countries are so populous, the doctors actually got a lot of practice on those routine procedures, and therefore very very competent.
If you get really sick, you want to be in the US. But if it's a routine procedure, it's definitely heading to Mexico or some other countries to save money.
As soon as I get my citizenship, I'm voting. Even my parents who are just absolutely regular folks in China have better healthcare than I do. And I'm not exactly low income in the US. This is a disgrace.
Not necessarily. Germany has the power of negotiating drug prices as well (maybe China too). So, government funded, sure. But I doubt they're paying that 1400 USD price tag.
That's because corruption is legal in the US. Our votes truly do not matter.
strangley obvious, i guarentee you hese companies immediately saw dollar signs once covid hit media, then pulled every string to exaserbate everyones fears so that now its engrained in everyone's mind that the drug is needed, how else can the cost be explained? why is not as close to free for as many people as possible? nobody on earth should experience monetary gain from any of this.
Why isn’t the government stepping in? Oh yeah, because lobbying is allowed
It's such bullshit that bribery is legal if you're bribing the most important people in the country. This is the political equivalent of ye olde timey Catholic Church selling indulgences and we desperately need a modern day Martin Luther to nail a list of theses to Congress' door
We the people pay the grants that get these drugs researched and made and the scientists who make them aren’t being paid part of the profits. It’s a big scam
Nationalize the pharmaceutical industry
Or, at least, make a federal agency charged with researching, manufacturing and distributing important medications like antiobitics, insulin and Covid treatments, and give it robust protections against the inevitable lawsuits from the pharmaceutical industry.
Yeah the republicans would just go on a PR tour of why it’s a big conspiracy and they would eat it up
Imagine the conspiracy theories 🙄
That's the thing, they already think the gov owns big pharma.
Those people will foam at the mouth either way.
Definitely, that’s a great point. But the federal authorization and subsequent annual appropriations for that agency would be absolute dogshit partisan. The committee report language (the report that directs how, and for what, the numbers in the bill will be used for) for that agency every fiscal year would be, essentially, entirely written by lobbyists and special interests.
Consider that the federal government currently influences demand (subsidizing the purchase of prescription drugs through federal programs like Medicare ) and supply (basic biomedical research that provides a scientific foundation for the development of new drugs by, you guessed it, private industry). Add more control over R&D? Special interests will exploit, surely. Much like DOE, NIH, or DOD, they’d probably create research grant programs that can be entirely written off for a certain university/public-private partnerships.
R&D in the federal ecosystem can get really messy politically.
Socialize health care. It's just that simple. Richest country in the world can't afford insulin...
They can afford it.
They just believe everyone should fend for themselves.
Companies should be funded/bailed out by government though..
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses
I’m starting a new long term treatment of Tibsovo for a specific type of brain cancer. It’s literally $1000/day to take just two pills. I’ll take it every day for the rest of my life. I won’t pay that but that is the list price
I’m on a daily autoimmune injection that’s about $200/day. Had to jump through so many hoops to get it covered. Even though my insurance company is looking at $7 billion profit this year.
I got lucky that my insurance approved the prescription within 24hrs and I got them the next day. Lots of factors at play but I really appreciate my good work insurance
Good insurance makes a difference! (In my case, the issue was the prescription is off-label. But that’s because only a few hundred people have my condition so there are zero meds approved for treatment.).
Hope your pills keep you healthy for many years to come!
insurance is refusing to pay for the brand name of my seizure medication (which stops me from having a seizure or feel like I am going to have a breakthrough seizure) until I have a few seizures
the generic saves them $50
My daughter is taking Jakafi, it's $20k/month. She has to take it twice a day for the rest of her life.
So you know, there is a coupon.
https://rx.webmd.com/50881001060/jakafi/coupon
They almost certainly already know. Literally nobody could afford to pay 20k per month, and the drug manufactures know this.
I'm also on ruxo! But I am on 20 mg twice daily, which comes to around ~70k a month
We need to sue Pfizer for endangering human life through price gouging. This medication was paid for to be developed by U.S taxpayers and the U.S government. It is abhorrent to the extreme to use our money to develop it and then try to sell it back to us at a reprehensible rate. Paxlovid can save lives and it's also a last resort because of the cost and availability, which is insane.
Imagine getting funded from tax dollar to develop and use the country system to distribute only to keep all the profit to themselves. At least pay it back
Pfizer didn't accept funding from Operation Warp Speed to fund the development of the drug.
Operation Warp Speed is just the tip of the iceberg. All the basic science and much of the translational science which eventually leads to these drugs being discovered and manufactured is done in research labs using government funding.
Aren't such researches free to use by anyone without royalties?
Wow, costs us $30 AUD for a full course in Australia. US health system is inhumane.
And we pay for this service.
Life-saving medicine offered for free during the pandemic will now cost an average month's rent while Congress continues using both hands and a flashlight to find their asshole.
I don’t really know what this analogy means but it’s provocative
Noone knows what it means, but it gets the people going!
you misspelled fleshlight.
Big Pharma strikes again. Raise your hand if you believe pharmaceutical companies are 100% honest when they say how much it costs to bring a new drug to market. Blood suckers all of them!
Advertising and marketing is quite expensive
So ya, seems about right. That’s what drug dealers do, mark it up, mark it up.
Who would of thought a pharmaceutical company wouldn’t be full of greedy pieces of shits. Guess they didn’t make enough billions yet..
So the American people bankrolled their research and development of this drug, and pay out ass in insurance premiums for this drug they already paid for. 🖕
Yep. That's good old capitalism for you, don't ya know?
Jesus Christ…
I’m in Canada, and my provincial government is covering the cost of Paxlovid.
I got COVID for the first time after a 3.5 year run, and I was thinking it was gonna be expensive even with insurance
But when it was dropped off at my place, I saw the receipt saying $0.00 across the board saying our provincial pharmacare plan covered it.
As a reminder, Pfizer made $100 Billion in revenue from the Covid Pandemic. There is absolutely no reason to be charging this much other than profit.
After expenses, what was the profit?
They still made a cool $31.4 billion profit. That is higher margins than tech (Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon).
Hot damn
No wonder they’ve been running nonstop commercials
Takin a page our of the Martin Shkreli book I see...
The development of this drug was probably heavily subsidized by the us government. How the fuck are they charging this much for it
Remember, they do this because they can. Because we let them. Because they know we won’t stop them.
If it wasn't for insurance companies being willing to pay this, there is no way they could charge that price.
And Pfizer just announced new layoffs
If it is illegal to profit in war from peoples suffering, how the hell is it legal to profit from peoples suffering/healthcare needs?!?!?????!
Lobbying=legal corruption
How big are the profit margins of these pharmaceutical companies?
What does it cost non-Americans?
In Australia with a concession card (for pensioners, those on government support and so on) it’s $7.30, for everyone else it’s $30. You do need a special authority from Medicare though in order to get it subsidised. It costs pharmacies around $1000-$1100 to buy Paxlovid but they are reimbursed by the government for it
Yep. You can see it here.
https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/119406/paxlovid-co-pack-tablets-30-authority-script-nirmatrelvir-ritonavir
About half US prices, predominantly because of plummeting exchange rates.
I fucking hate America. Fuck this place
In BC (Canada) it is fully covered by the government so no out of pocket cost for patients.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/practitioner-professional-resources/pharmacare/pharmacies/monitoring-paxlovid-ade
Same here in Alberta, though I had to call 3 pharmacies before I found one that had it
Except in BC, you don’t have access to paxlovid unless you’re 70 or older + additional caveats. So even if it’s fully covered, virtually all 50-69 year olds are out of luck.
I think it’s free in NZ or at least very low in cost?
Weirdly I was looking up the price and apparently it cost the NZ govt $530USD per dose in February 2023….
But I thought big pharma were our friends! Not believing that makes you a conspiracy theorist!
And just like that, everyone turned on big pharma again.
Meanwhile, isn’t it free in Australia?
But healthcare for all is socialism and until that mindset is forgotten this will continue to happen
I wonder what is the relationship to that obscene price and its actual cost? Plus, how much taxpayer funding was used for research and its development?
Was the creation of this drug funded by American tax dollars?
My wife has to have a shot once per month for the rest of her life. It’s retail price is $6,000. Right now the manufacturer charges us $50 as insurance won’t cover it and I’m afraid one day the drug maker will just ask us for the full amount, ending their discount.
As if this company didn't make enough money off of COVID already.
This is the absolute worst of humanity on display.
Stay classy,Pfizer. You're welcome for all that public money.
Pfizer's revenue in 2019 before Covid? $41 billion. Their revenue in 2022? $100 billion.
Taxpayers (via the government) have already paid Pfizer $529 per treatment of Paxlovid and will through 2024.
Pfizer's thanks to taxpayers for their publicly-funded huge windfall? Increasing the cost of this medicine to $1390 per treatment.
Jonas Salk famously chose not to patent the polio vaccine in 1955. Contrast that selfless act to Pfizer's actions today.
The greed has no bounds in the current US healthcare system.
What's the EU pricing?
insurance is a scam, and the insurance industry contributes to these inflated prices.
Public funding paid for the development of this drug and yet now people must pay 1400 for a dose?
The U.S. reminds me so much of the later stages of the Roman Empire, only so long until it completely collapses.
I generally agree, but as long as 84% of all global transactions are happening in USD and our military is 10x the strength of the next guy, it's likely going to still be a while.
Not because we don't suck, but because everyone else seems too incompetent and messed up internally themselves to truly catch up.
I think eventually we go the way of the UK, a has been that still had some sway but not nearly what it once did, with terrible inflation and high cost of living making life much less grand than it once was for the majority.
We deserve EXACTLY what we allow.
I'M not the one allowing it. I'm not the idiot who votes for the idiots who DON'T FIX THIS.
DESPITE my trying to vote for people who will, I am overwhelmingly drowned out... or lied to because the candidate doesn't actually do the thing. DESPITE my unequivocal and undying message of "THIS IS WHY I AM VOTING FOR YOU: FIX HEALTHCARE TOP TO BOTTOM GODDAMN IT, LIKE YOU SAY YOU WILL."
I am NOT allowing it. It's other assholes who keep voting for the ones who DO NOT GET THE SHIT DONE THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.
But I will damn well keep trying. I don't deserve what others have voted in/jury rigged to be the situation, and neither do those people, frankly. We ALL deserve better, even the assholes who don't know they do and vote the above idiots in. Maybe the ones who keep healthcare a piece of shit fucked up thing in this country don't deserve it... but then, guess what, THEY benefit from exactly the kind of healthcare WE DO NOT GET.
How in the HELL do WE deserve what THEY WILL NOT ALLOW?!
Vote, and be vociferous about why you are voting them in. They need to hear that message loud and clear: FIX THIS SHIT OR YOU DON'T GET ROUND TWO.
/soapbox /rant
//Sorry. I'm riled. :|
American healthcare is a farce. Universal healthcare yesterday.
Pay up or die, the American motto
It's just so fucked.
Making money off of sick people.
Genuinely, if a company spends billions developing 15 drugs, and only one actually gets through trials to market, how much do you want them to charge? If they aren't going to make a profit and just lose money, why would they do the research in the first place?
You really NEED to profit BILLIONS...TRILLIONS off sick people?
So whats the right number? You realize if the R&D for these drugs don't get funded then the sick people simply never get a drug at all right?
Its always been about the money, not your health.
That's kind of fucked up. I don't even think I made that much total as a medical testee for Pfizer During the vaccine trials.
A lot of people here saying that Pfizer didn’t get public funding. Yet they got 1.9B for 100m doses before the vaccine even had FDA approval and the partner company BioNTech got 450m from the German government to expedite research and development.
You can PR speak however you want it, it doesn’t change the paper trail that show public funds were used.
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This isn't the vaccine.
Obvious racket, needs regulated.
Don’t forget these drugs were developed using taxpayers money and they turned around and fuck us
WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK?
I am different than the average person
I have spent so much of my life inpatient in hospital for weeks at a time due to lung problems
I don’t have insurance
I am maxed vaxxed and as careful as I can be and not be agoraphobic
$1,400
I don’t have that much spare change
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Edit
Pfizer plans to subsidize copays of people who are commercially insured at least through 2028.
This doesn’t help me
Probably cheaper for a return flight/driving to a country that's not the US to get the shot honestly if you really need it. Crazy. You can get prescription drugs from Canada for way cheaper, mailed to the US. Maybe Mexico too, not sure though. Use every advantage you can to save money. CalRX Insulin is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, people out of state can order it as well.
Good thing they already took so much of our taxpayer money
This is why US healthcare either should be price regulated or nationalised ( though I don’t think nationalisation would work in the US ). But there is some serious need to regulate prices some how and cut out all the bullshit.
Pharma companies deserve dark things.
And it’s still not apparent to most.
How much did Pfizer receive from the govt to develop covid drugs and vaccines? Also - we can buy it cheaper in many countries
Ivermectin waves from the barnyard
Create the problem, sell a solution to still not fix a problem. Lol
Damn. “Wish I would have invested more in Pfizer”. Says all of congess and senate.
Why? Just to make money? I’m sure it don’t cost that much to produce.
https://youtu.be/P-HDg3ndo2k?si=eUJJlr6oNLtj320X
Is this a good time to remind people to get the newly updated covid vaccines to reduce their chance of needing paxlovid?
Did they receive federal funding for this drug?
And once again i am thanking the universe for being born in a country that has universal healthcare
Guess I know what to klept from Rite Aid's warehouses as they shut down? These drug prices are ridiculous
A medicine nobody wants to take at a price nobody wants to pay
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That treatment was probably monoclonal antibodies. Apparently they were about $2100 per dose, plus hospital markup and IV service cost.
but we’re here to help
What happens when we boycott a company making one of the vaccines by shifting to the least shady competitor? Or was that already them? Fuck… they’re ALL shady, aren’t they? We’re fucked. We’re all fucked.
Why are we even paying healthcare bills? We need to organize and refuse to pay these criminal prices.
If Big Pharma is worldwide, are the prices of the pharmaceuticals the same, or do the prices vary by market? If the prices are the same, how do countries provide subsidized healthcare for their citizens while we can’t. Does BP make up their losses in revenue for those countries by making it in ours.
The US makes up for the lower revenue in the rest of the world.
You can pretty much ensure they're making profit on any sale around the developed world, it's just a question of how much. In single payer systems, the size of the market sees them taking lower profits to be able to access that market. In the US system, they set the prices as high as they think the market can bare and generate super profits.
I'm sure health insurance companies wont pay that much.
Medicare charges on the other hand...