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President Donald Trump recently raised the question of drug pricing in the United States.
Martin Shkreli may be the poster boy for greed in the pharmaceutical industry, but his practices are not the only ones that should be investigated.
Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions from a congressional committee about raising the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000 percent. Shkreli smirked during the hearing and later tweeted, "Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government."
Hardly repentant. It could be argued, though, that this is simply one man.
However, we noticed something on one of our prescriptions that was troubling. We take a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) for arthritis. A refill of that drug cost us a co-pay of $11 for a 90-day supply. But there was something on our receipt we had never seen before, a notation that read "Cash Price 717.49."
Now, our pill is not a brand label, it is a generic. Nor is it a new formulation -- it has been available for over a decade. Yet our receipt seemed to indicate that had we not had insurance the cost of our medication for three months would have been over $700.
As a test, we looked up the same NSAID on a Canadian pharmacy on the internet. The price for 100 pills of the same 200 MG dosage was $79 -- one-tenth of the cost here.
What gives? We assume that both the pharmacy and the drug company are making money at the price in Canada. So, why is the cash price for one pill $7.97 here and 79 cents in Canada?
We do not know what price our insurance company has negotiated with our pharmacy for our pills. All we know is that our receipt says "Cash Price 717.49." That would indicate uninsured people are paying that price.
If true, someone (Congress? The FDA?) should explain why. Or, maybe, the new president is just the man to "negotiate a deal" with drugmakers that brings U.S. prices in line with other countries
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