The problem is that most other countries regulate drug prices and have some form of socialized medicine or single payer. Which leaves the drug companies no choice but to make the bulk of their profits here in the US. What needs to happen is the US needs to pay a lot less and the rest of the world needs to pay a little more. We need COMPREHENSIVE drug price controls, not the bandaid of buying drugs from Canada.

from they way that they've broken Obamacare that it's all related and that if you break one piece, then you break it all. You can't just have a bunch of unrelated bills out there with no common goal in mind. That would be stupid. That would be like allocating $5.7 Billion dollars to some kind of wall project without any studies, or plans, or estimates, or specific allocation of funds. Just allocating $5.7 Billion dollars to some kind of slush fund or something. Idiotic...

This is all about political donations to greedy politicians. List each politician, and the amount each receives from lobbyists for big pharma. It is not only drugs. I had to get hearing aids. The prices were $2,900, $3,900 or $4,900. I chose the medium priced ones. My niece in the UK told me that hearing aides are FREE under the NHS. No means testing to receive them, either. Seniors are considered from age 60 up. Their pensions start at age 60. Ambulances are free, too. The US has their citizens in servitude to medical costs, while the politicians give themselves GREAT medical coverage for life. If they had to use the same policies for medical coverage as most people, THEN there would be changes made. It saddens me when people have to declare bankruptcy in order to get out from under medical bills. Parents having to have fund raisers to afford health treatments for their children. It is a disgrace.

I remember when getting braces for your kid used to cost around $1200. Then dental insurance started covering them and they would pay $1000 of the cost. Next thing you knew, the cost of braces was $2200. To the dentists and doctors, the amount the insurance company would pay was just free money. If you think about it, the copay and deductible is probably all the service you get is really worth. The rest is just money to spread around to big executives of the clinics and hospitals, insurance companies, and pharms...

down to the politicians.

Hell, this whole thread. We're patients first, victims second and an account in the tills of the greedsters third.

That stopped Single Payer,along with Leiberman and Max Baucus.

Omce FSAs were out there to cover the cost of eyeglasses, they went up to $300+. Fuck 'em. I buy my glasses online for less than the cost of a copay.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opinion/cost-insurance-diabetes-insulin.html?fbclid=IwAR1D5zbSN51ZzwW5V_mARyS7p3i6rdE8hKKI2kiJcqDMT0O33o9bmYheJyM

The exorbitant prices confound patients and doctors alike since insulin is nearly a century old now. The pricing is all the more infuriating when one considers that the discoverers of insulin sold the patent for $1 each to ensure that the medication would be affordable. Today the three main manufacturers of insulin are facing a lawsuit accusing them of deceptive pricing schemes, but it could be years before this yields any changes.

There are several reasons that insulin is so expensive. It is a biologic drug, meaning that it’s produced in living cells, which is a difficult manufacturing process. The bigger issue, however, is that companies tweak their formulations so they can get new patents, instead of working to create cheaper generic versions. This keeps insulin firmly in brand-name territory, with prices to match.

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It suddenly struck me that insurance companies and drug manufacturers had come upon an ingenious business plan: They could farm out their dirty work to the doctors and the patients. Let the doctors be the ones to navigate the bureaucratic hoops and then deliver the disappointing news to our patients. Let patients be the ones to figure out how to ration their medications or do without.

Congress and the Food and Drug Administration need to tame the Wild West of drug pricing. When there’s an E. coli outbreak that causes illness and death, we rightly expect our regulatory bodies to step in. The outbreak of insulin greed is no different.

With their tentacles around the throats of so many politicos....only way this country's people will see
reductions on their meds....Through taxes...

In this corner, wearing the red trunks, we have powerful, profitable, unchallengeable pharma.

In this corner, wearing the blue trunks, we have working class poor, struggling for the gift of life by obtaining much needed medicine, in all too many cases at grossly inflated and outrageous prices for the sake of greed.

Who wins in this fight, the Lear jet or the old 2002 Ford Focus? When did fucking over the disadvantaged with pride and glee become acceptable to anybody?

How sad, so sad.

The Big Pharma lobby is very powerful, though. It owns both parties, is my understanding. It is responsible for putting that provision in Medicare's Part D that specifically prohibits the federal government from even negotiating prices, even though medicare is the biggest group in the country.

Sen. John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, was co-sponsor of Part D. After it was passed, he left Congress and went to work for a Big Pharma company with a starting salary of about $1 Million Dollars. And that was, what, 15 or so years ago.