How the hell are we supposed to retire?

Norm said:
Shouldn’t the question really be, why in the living fuck is a single shot $29k?
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Because the system is broken. They charge as much as they can get away with. Forgetting about all my other bills, RWJH charged about $700k for my bone marrow transplant. United Healthcare wanted to move me to some hospital in another state because they were willing to do it for about $250k. My wife fought it out with them I got to stay, but the amounts charged for every little thing are ridiculous. $9000/night for a bed in the Bone Marrow Unit. Just the bed, nothing else. I was there for well over 100 nights.

And these are prices from 19 years ago. I can't imagine what it is now,
 
Norm said:
Shouldn’t the question really be, why in the living fuck is a single shot $29k?
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It's what the market will bear? High development costs and a limited use-case? Combine those with a patent that may have been issued 20 years before the drug actually made it to market and you get stupid-high per-dose costs so it can actually make some money before the patent expires. Yeah... it's a shitty system... but I've also seen the results of when a drug company invests hundreds of millions into producing a drug that ends up not working... and all of those costs get written off. I've literally seen a $1B manufacturing building sit idle for years because of that... and then it ended up getting demolished because after years of trying, they couldn't find a new use for the facility that they were paying taxes on every year.
 
Ian F said:
It's what the market will bear? High development costs and a limited use-case? Combine those with a patent that may have been issued 20 years before the drug actually made it to market and you get stupid-high per-dose costs so it can actually make some money before the patent expires. Yeah... it's a shitty system... but I've also seen the results of when a drug company invests hundreds of millions into producing a drug that ends up not working... and all of those costs get written off. I've literally seen a $1B manufacturing building sit idle for years because of that... and then it ended up getting demolished because after years of trying, they couldn't find a new use for the facility that they were paying taxes on every year.
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My heart weeps for the pharma companies struggling to make ends meet in this day and age.

Note that my wife and 2 of our best friends make livings off this same pharma industry so I understand the duplicity there. But fuck it. I, as someone living in a glass house, reserve the right to throw stones.
 
Norm said:
My heart weeps for the pharma companies struggling to make ends meet in this day and age.

Note that my wife and 2 of our best friends make livings off this same pharma industry so I understand the duplicity there. But fuck it. I, as someone living in a glass house, reserve the right to throw stones.
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Same here... working for a "swamp" industry does present its own set of moral dilemmas... That I am in line to inherit some amount of money made from my grandfather being an executive in the oil industry is also not lost on me - assuming I outlive my mother, which is not a given.
 
Norm said:
My heart weeps for the pharma companies struggling to make ends meet in this day and age.

Note that my wife and 2 of our best friends make livings off this same pharma industry so I understand the duplicity there. But fuck it. I, as someone living in a glass house, reserve the right to throw stones.
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Like when anyone asks about the company I work for and there involvement in fracking infrastructure or THE wall
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Norm said:
Shouldn’t the question really be, why in the living fuck is a single shot $29k?
Click to expand...
It only is that because in the US system every single middleman's hand that touches it from manufacturer to patient marks it up so they can take a cut. The national distributor, the local distributor, the PBM, the corporate pharmacy, the local pharmacy, the insurance company, the hospital, the provider. Nobody actually gets $29k of profit, but all along the way at each step a profit is made. Contrast that to Europe - the government negotiates a price with the manufacturer, that is what they pay for it, there are no (or very little) distribution costs, and the patients pay nothing. It also means that not all medications are available unless you want to pay cash out of pocket, and in many instances people in those countries don't have access to innovations until much later.
 
Ian F said:
It's what the market will bear? High development costs and a limited use-case? Combine those with a patent that may have been issued 20 years before the drug actually made it to market and you get stupid-high per-dose costs so it can actually make some money before the patent expires. Yeah... it's a shitty system... but I've also seen the results of when a drug company invests hundreds of millions into producing a drug that ends up not working... and all of those costs get written off. I've literally seen a $1B manufacturing building sit idle for years because of that... and then it ended up getting demolished because after years of trying, they couldn't find a new use for the facility that they were paying taxes on every year.
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This. People love to think there's a single simple explanation for this, but it's not one thing, it's EVERYTHING. I read that less than 10% of drugs that enter the clinical trial phase ever get approved. Also, some of these drugs are for diseases that are somewhat rare, so the market is limited. Plus, pharma companies have to maintain big cash reserves for the inevitable class action lawsuits that arise after patients sprout a 3rd arm growing out of their foreheads 20 years later.
 
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