Modern Healthcare

Mylan is cutting out of pocket costs by half for Epi-pens.

 

Ain't that nice of them.

I mean, the fact that they can, with the swipe of a pen, cut a medicine's cost in half should really say something.

 

likely that this was their target price all along.

 

Exactly. We all know how that game is played. You want x, you ask for 2x, and begrudgingly accept x.

 

also, part of it may be that they have to set price unreasonably high to get insurance to pay a certain percentage.

not saying it is, just that it is possible.

 

Oh, they have said as much. Blaming the insurance companies and the new Obamacare policies on the pricing. Which is ludicrous.

If you only charge 50 bucks for the damn things, insurance companies, I imagine, won't even balk at it.

 

There is another one or two that are cheaper. I forget what they're called.

 

As a doctor, what are your views on the whole health care system? What drives up your costs at your practice more than anything? I will admit that a lot of my views on this are aimed at Pharm and insurance (health and malpractice).

 

which is fine and dandy except even if you hate them, if they don't make a profit, they go away.

in dealing with insurance from the reimbursement side, they are more evil than you could ever imagine.

 

In this particular instance, though, the medicine in the epipen costs $1 (roughly), then you have to make the pen itself (plastic thingamabob they have been producing for decades) and that cannot cost too much. I just don't see the need for a 6000% mark up to over come insurance problems.

And all of this is my ranting on what I know looking in from the outside.

 

Nothing you can fix easily. There are probably ways to make things more affordable, but it's probably necessarily not going to be cheap.

 

is it?

 

How in the world would insurance and Obamacare change what a pharma company sells its wares for?

 

Obamacare excise tax on medical devices is just one example. Notably, the tax is levied on gross sales, not profits. If I sell a device for $1000 and even have a 10% profit margin, the tax takes away about a quarter of the profits.

 

Thank you for the information. Does that explain a 400% hike in something?

 

Gave you one example of hidden costs most people are not aware of. I am sure there are countless others. Not saying it justifies anything in the epi-pen example.

 

no, but if there is a product they are losing on and they have to have it they have to offset.

 

That is my understanding as well. It applies to the company's sells of all medical devices so long as the company itself is profitable. Made news several years ago that one company ended up with an effective tax rate of about 80%.

 

Can they not just claim losses on that stuff? I know I am looking at a lot of this in a vacuum, but damn, it looks bad when it happens. And the CEO is getting astronomical pay raises to boot.

 

sure, you can, but if you continue to lose money you are going to have lots of issues.

it is just another example of a broken system. the whole thing is broken, needs to be torn down and rebuilt.