Whose making the money the pharmacy or the manufacturers? I have a friend when walking up to her parents after graduating from pharmacy school, waved her diploma and said "this is my license to steal". Her first job was a $100,000.00 job. That was 10 years ago.
I think, Jim, the answer is -- there is enough blame to go around to both pharmacies and manufacturers!
This is not the first time I have seen the following information. The Life Extension Foundation had a big article entitled "The Shocking Truth Behind Prescription Drug Prices" in its October 2002 issue, and the table below apparently is excerpted from it. What follows just came in my e-mail again last night from a friend. I think you may make a few reasonable inferences about the answers to your questions from this.
Marlys
- Subject: DRUG INFO
- In an independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, the actual price was obtained of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America. The chart below speaks for itself.
- Retail Increase
- Cost of Cost of Above
- DRUG 100 TABS Ingredients Cost
- Celebrex 100 mg $130.27 $0.60 21,712%
- Claritin 10 mg $215.17 $0.71 30,306%
- Keflex 250 mg $157.39 $1.88 8,372%
- Lipitor 20 mg $272.37 $5.80 4,696%
- Norvasc 10 mg $188.29 $0.14 134,493%
- Paxil 20 mg $220.27 $7.60 2,898%
- Prevacid 30 mg $44.77 $1.01 34,136%
- Prilosec 20 mg $360.97 $0.52 69,417%
- Prozac 20 mg $247.47 $0.11 224,973%
- Tenormin 50 mg $104.47 $0.13 80,362%
- Vasotec 10 mg $102.37 $0.20 51,185%
- Xanax 1mg $136.79 $0.024 569,958%
- Zestril 20 mg $89.89 $3.20 2,809%
- Zithromax 600mg $1,482.19 $18.78 7,892%
- Zocor 40mg $350.27 $8.63 4,059%
- Zoloft 50mg $206.87 $1.75 11,821%
- Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone I knew should know about this. Please read the following and pass it on.
- It pays to shop around. This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreens on every corner...
- On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that's not a typo..... three thousand percent!
- So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are "saving" $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!
- At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Cost co consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs.
- I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine,
- which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I! could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08. I would like to mention, that although Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a
- federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.
- I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and pasting it into your own email, and send it to everyone you know with an email address
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