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]

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*