PSA for Americans

[blamebrampton]

Just watching PBS Newshour, as I like to do when I have a chance, and they had a story on pricing practices of chain pharmacies. They compared a number of cancer, cholesterol and mental health drugs from a number of outlets.

At Costco, the woman who the story was based on found her generic cancer medication for $11 for 30 days. At Target it was $450 for the same script. Yep, $11 v $450. No typos. To be fair to Target, they did offer to price match when told of the lower figure.

According to PBS, many people do not shop around on prescriptions. It appears it would be very much worth the time to do so. For the drugs looked at, price differences ranged from around 10 times to the 40+ above. I thoroughly recommend the story, and apparently a website called Good Rx does a good job of comparing prices on major generics, too.

If you'll excuse me, I'll be over here giving a big juicy snog to the public health systems I have enjoyed throughout my life. I recognise the fact that I am very lucky!

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Seriously! The expense, the complexity and the sheer unfairness of the system to the consumer just staggers me. Americans have to do so much more work than the rest of us, it's boggling.

I've been reading people's posts this year of the differences between their old coverage and their new under the Affordable Health Care Act and the fact that a fundamentally pretty meh system has made such an incredible positive difference to every single person who has posted about it on my flist just makes me want to both hug them and cry.

But, since hugging and crying are both out, info spreading it is! I have to say that I finished watching that story and was sitting there saying "what the hell!!??' for a good few minutes.

[germankitty]

What really boggles my mind is the general opposition to "Obamacare" in the US. I mean, independence and whatnot are all fair and well, but can we please have some common sense to go with it? You can't have your cake and eat it, too, peeps -- either you accept some government regulation if it benefits all, or continue to go bankrupt over medical treatments. It's your free, independent choice.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, the opposition comes mostly from the loud cries of vested interests rather than from the general populace. This makes a lot of sense to me: if you're a company that can convince people they should be paying $439 more than they need to for a script, you're going to try to hold onto that money while you legally can!

Most of the individuals I have heard speaking out against it are obvious ideologues whose entire rationale is based on the hatred of government involvement. Which again, makes a lot of sense: it's the only coherent reason to oppose it, since public healthcare is absolutely proven to cost less and provide better outcomes for the vast majority of people.

What is frustrating is that there is such a large number of them in the Congress and Senate, working against the interests of their constituents, and that the media gives them such a strong voice in the name of 'balance' even when they are spouting utter and obvious crap.

Sadly, common sense and government are two concepts that have been diverging over the last 40 years :-(

[germankitty]

"Sadly, common sense and government are two concepts that have been diverging over the last 40 years :-("

Yeah, and not just in the US. *sigh*

You're right of course; the irony is that a lot of people let themselves be misguided by those ideologues even though the new healthcare system would benefit them enormously.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

It's so depressing! But then, in Australiia we've just had a government elected on the basis that they promised to give a portion of the populace a bit more in their pocket – completely ignoring that they would be screwing over the long-term health of the economy to do so :-(

[germankitty]

*snerk* People will elect whoever makes them the rosiest promises. We had exactly that happen after reunification -- the Conservatives under Chancellor Kohl told everyone bringing the former GDR up to West German standards would be a walk in the park and cost peanuts. The opposition said that it wasn't going to be quite that easy, and probably cost a lot more than could be guessed at at the time. They lost by a landslide on both sides.

Now it's 25 years later, the eastern states still haven't caught up all the way, and guess what? We're also still paying a "solidarity contribution" to make those adjustments, and it looks increasingly as if that contribution is going to be permanent. But it's NOT an increase in taxes, oh no ... the Social Democrats said they'd have to raise taxes, but of course the Conservatives used more flowery language and hoodwinked everybody ... *headdesk*

[josephinestone.livejournal.com]

This,

My FIL complains about Obamacare all the time, when it would probably save him a lot of money each month. Right now, I pay almost as much in health care as I do on my rent. And we are lucky to not have any preexisting conditions, and we are non-smokers.

[geneva2010.livejournal.com]

What you say is true, but the depressing thing is that the opposition party won't like anything that President Obama proposes just because he had the temerity to be elected president. They can't get over it. Nothing he can do will ever be right. The same attitude prevailed during the Clinton years, but not nearly as bad or as virulent.

The ACA is such a huge improvement over what we have, but a lot of people don't realize how bad we have it, and how much of a drag on the economy our health care system is. We waste so much productivity of people with inadequate health care, and also on the horrible immigration policies. If those two things were truly fixed, we would see a big boom.

[ashindk.livejournal.com]

Well said!