Former hedge fund manager acquires life-saving drug, raises price 5,555% to $750/pill

Fifteen years ago, my health insurance cost about $20 a month. It pretty much covered everything, and doctor visit co-pays were $5 or $10.

These days, with my wife and two kids, we have some sort of health savings plan where we contribute so much a month and the employer kicks in about $2,000 a year. Our out-of-pocket limit is $6,500, which we met this year, so now doctor visits are basically free, and prescriptions cost next to nothing. But we had to pay $6,500 to get there.

 

Tony, a serious question (eventually):

The police do not send you a bill when they help you --- our taxes take care of that.

The fire department does not send you a bill when it helps you --- our taxes take care of that.

Public schools do not bill you for educating your kids --- our taxes take care of that.

I think we can agree that those are three pretty important services that most would say work reasonably well vis a vis how we pay for them and what we get out of them.

Why does the idea of using that system for health care make conservatives recoil in horror? It's not a new idea --- it's done all over the world.

Or, to put it another way, would you prefer that ALL services be billed and that none went into our taxes? Fire department comes to your house, does what it can to preserve it . . . and then sends you a $35,000 bill.

 

The cost of producing this medicine did not increase one cent, yet he chose to raise the price 5,555 percent. This has nothing to do with cost.

 

Agreed ... It has everything to do with someone noticing an opportunity to exploit stupid regulations for profit ...

Generic Drug Regulation and Pharmaceutical Price-Jacking

 

One tip. If you ever get a medical bill for several hundred or several thousand bucks, make a counteroffer. They will usually accept.

Hello Podunk Hospital, I have a bill here for $800. Would you take $400 now to settle the bill or would you like to put me on a payment plan?

They will take the $400. You can shoot for $300, too.

 

How does one get to where this guy is so early in life?

It's stories like these that are the reason I'm so resentful of the rich, I guess.

That and Ted Nugent saying that being poor is a choice (As if he's ever worked a 40-hour week in his life), Bill Cunningham saying poor people are poor because they lack character, some other guy saying that everyone, regardless of income, should pay the same dollar amount in taxes (not percentage of income, the same dollar amount) because "The rich are a minority and it's wrong to discriminate against them."

Like hell it is.

 

Novant would not budge one penny on our $4,800 bill. I offered to write a check on the spot for lesser amount. All we got was a six--month, interest-free payment plan. All for diagnosis of a kidney stone they could do nothing about (except provide Vicodin).

 

Holy crap.. $4,800 for a kidney stone diagnosis.

More details, please.

 

And just wait until a white doctor accidentally commits malpractice, a black patient dies, the president makes a speech ripping on doctors and suddenly it's open season on doctors.

 

"The classic example is a lighthouse. All the ships benefit from having one. So let's say they all decide to chip in and pay for it -- everyone pays, everyone benefits. What inevitably happens is that one ship owner says, "The others will cover the cost but I can still benefit from it -- they can't exclude me from benefiting from the light." So he stops sending in his share of the cost. And the next thing you know, another stops paying. ... and so on. ... and then there is no lighthouse.

Police, fire, etc. suffer from this problem. If everyone else covers the cost of police patrolling, I can still benefit from what those others are paying for -- even if I refuse to pay a share of the cost. Which is why governments learned that if we are to have certain things, payment has to be imposed on everyone -- rather than it being done a voluntary basis. Otherwise, people will not want to pay, thinking everyone else will cover the cost for a benefit that is non-excludable."

_________________________-

Excellent examples that also perfectly spell out why everyone who works at a shop where the union is the negotiator for the contracts that cover all employees should pay union dues, even if they don't always agree with the union. Those who don't pay still benefit from the gains won by union representation.

 

That was just the "hospital" bill.

$900 for 5 hours in the ER (80 percent of the time spent alone)
$14o for "Injection IV push inital"
$300 for "injection IV push seq new drg
$360 for "IV INF hydrat ea addl hr
$80 for CBC w/auto differential
$140 for Comprehensive metabolic panel
$2,200 for pelvic CAT scan (I could actually translate that from the bill)
$110 for urine culture
$40 for urinalysis
$85 for Hydromorphone HCL (PF)
$60 for Ketorolac Tromethamine
$75 for NACL 0.9% SOLN 1,000 ml flex cont
$60 for Ondansetron 4 mg/2 ml SOLN 2 ml vial
$1 for Oxycodone 5 mg tabs 1 each blister (what a deal!)

Didn't count $400 to the doctor (who spent about 15 minutes of actual time with my wife), or $300 for the person who actually read the CAT scan results, or a small ($79) "pharmacy" charge.

Also nice of them to charge $114 for a pregnancy test when my wife informed them at the start that there was no way she was pregnant.

That's all well and good. But other nations sure seem to treat it as such. Successfully, too. What makes us different? What makes your definition applicable only to the United States?