Showing posts with label pharmaceutical companies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pharmaceutical companies. Show all posts

Sunday, March 29, 2015

THE HIGH COST OF DRUGS


Like most elderly people, I take several medicines every day--for hypertension, arthritis, and other ailments--and hate to think what life would be without those drugs.
Recently I learned I have pancreatitis, a painful disease caused by a sluggish pancreas.  Just getting the diagnosis took several months, so finally learning the source of my pain was a great relief, especially when some samples of Creon (pancreatic enzymes) helped greatly. Then my doctor broke the news that Creon (manufactured by Abbott Labs) costs up to $10 per capsule. No generic version is available. As I need four capsules a day, this drug could cost me nearly $1200 a month, nearly my entire Social Security income! I do have a good Medicare Part D insurance plan that would lower the monthly cost to about $240, but even that is a lot of money for me. I do not qualify for Medi-Cal or other subsidies; the government thinks I have too much money, which I find amusing. (Most of my retirement savings were spent long ago for my late husband’s surgeries and hospitalizations—his bills would have come to more than a million dollars without Medicare--but that’s another story.)
In desperation, I plan to order Creon from a drug company in Canada. That is a clunky, slow process, and possibly a risky one, but it looks as if I can get my medicine for about $50 a month. At this point, that actually seems like a bargain.
Considering the enormous amounts that pharmaceutical companies spend on advertising (in JAMA and other medical journals, as well as those irritating TV ads), I think they can well afford to make needed drugs more affordable. Luckily, my illness is not life-threatening, but many people endanger their lives by cutting pills in half, delaying having prescriptions refilled, and by other cost-saving actions. When will Big Pharma and the government wake up and realize they may be killing the geese that lay the golden eggs?