PSA for Americans
Dec. 24th, 2013 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blamebramptonJust 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!
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!
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no subject
Date: 2013-12-24 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-24 03:39 pm (UTC)The thing that makes me such a massive fan of public healthcare is that it keeps the prices down for private healthcare, too. I often go private because my nearest doctor only does private and physio (my main health service) is slow to access through public, but even then, I get a rebate for the doctor's appointments, and the costs are minimal to start with: $65 for a full consultation and flu jab, for example. My American friends pay a lot more for a similar service, because the 'free market' for healthcare is so distorted by the interests of major companies.