What drugs really cost you...

[NikPreviousAcct]

I just got this in an email from my sister. True or not, it makes me serious wonder just how much they're marked up. I know everything is marked up so that somebody can make a profit to keep providing access to the products, but this is insane...

WHAT DRUGS REALLY COST .
This was sent to me, and I wanted to share it with you........

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.

In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America. The chart below speaks for itself.

BRAND NAME OF DRUG CONSUMER PRICE 100 TABS COST OF GENERAL ACTIVE INGREDIENTS PERCENT MARKUP

Drug Name, Price/100, Cost, Markup: (FuseTalk is TERRIBLE for tables)
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, $101, 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 for generics!

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 Costco 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.

 

[pulse8]

And you're surprised?

 

[GasX]

1. that doesn't factor in the cost of the process to turn those raw materials into drugs.
2. that doesn't factor in the requirement to recoup the $400 million dollars it took to get the FDA to approve the drug.
3. $400 million

 

[Ogg]

:thumbsdown:

 

[Fausto]

Snopes says "yes"!

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

400 mil to get the FDA to approve the drug?? What, so drug companies buy approval? Is that how the FDA works!?

 

[Eli]

Well, after a brief scan..

Do those figures take into account all money that was used to fund R&D to even discover the drug in the first place?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them.. but heh.

Besides, everybody knows that you pay a price premium for brands. If you dont want to pay, get generic! (although I realize some medications arent available in generic forms yet).

 

[Ogg]

Originally posted by: Fausto
Snopes says "yes"!

:thumbsup:

 

[Jumpem]

I don't like the prices, but the drug companies do exist to make a profit. They aren't in business to give away products at cost or just barely above. You also have to factor in the middleman such as the pharmacy.

Also, I imagine a large percentage of their revenues are invested into further product development(i.e. new drugs).

 

[imported_Strang]

Originally posted by: Mwilding
1. that doesn't factor in the cost of the process to turn those raw materials into drugs.
2. that doesn't factor in the requirement to recoup the $400 million dollars it took to get the FDA to approve the drug.
3. $400 million

Not to mention the money to recoup the initial R&D to develop the drug or to perform quality control.

It's expensive on both sides of the fence.

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
400 mil to get the FDA to approve the drug?? What, so drug companies buy approval? Is that how the FDA works!?

No, one has to prove to the FDA that a drug is both safe and effective. The cost of doing this is around $400 million dollars.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Doesn't the FDA do it's own work?

 

[Brutuskend]

The price of drugs in this country is sinful.

The Feds should step in and force them the price them "fairly"!

 

[samgau]

Yep... and the parm companies are putting pressure on the gov. to ban getting pres. drugs from Canada for 1/3 the price ... Corporate america and pharm/health insurance companies in particular is the suck..

 

[ElFenix]

would you bitch that a drug hasn't been made that cures your specific disease?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

First,

The value of the elements that make up a person is a few dollars. Ok, here is 10 bucks. Go build one.


Second, the gross margin nation wide is 2 percent.
Considering that in my area 95% of prescriptions are paid for by insurance, what pharmacies are actually paid is often cost plus a couple dollars. The profit made is mostly in that 5 percent.

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Doesn't the FDA do it's own work?

No. They review the data given to them by the drug company.

oh and if you think there is a conflict of interest in that the drug company is presenting its own data, keep in mind a good part of this cost is the massively bloated bureaucratic part of the process mandated by the FDA as a safeguard against abuse. That and the financial risk to a company fudging data makes it extremely unlikely.

 

[Brutuskend]

Originally posted by: Mwilding

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
400 mil to get the FDA to approve the drug?? What, so drug companies buy approval? Is that how the FDA works!?

No, one has to prove to the FDA that a drug is both safe and effective. The cost of doing this is around $400 million dollars.

So why do we (the US) have to foot the bill when they sell the same drugs to other countries for a fraction of the cost? Let THEM carry the R&D costs, or at least a fair percentage of them!

 

[maziwanka]

idiot doesnt figure in research costs and fda approval

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
would you bitch that a drug hasn't been made that cures your specific disease?

There's no drug to cure insanity.

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: Brutuskend
The price of drugs in this country is sinful.

The Feds should step in and force them the price them "fairly"!

what is "fairly"?

when you and FFMCobaly know how the system works a little better, maybe you can start criticizing yet. Until then, posting inflammatory emails and hyperbole is just going to make you another internet whiner.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Mwilding
1. that doesn't factor in the cost of the process to turn those raw materials into drugs.
2. that doesn't factor in the requirement to recoup the $400 million dollars it took to get the FDA to approve the drug.
3. $400 million

From Snopes, point 1:
Fluoxetine HCL (the generic for Prozac), which wholesales for $1.48, varied in retail price from a high of $92.24 to a low of $9.69 just within the Detroit area.

That wholesale price takes into account cost to process/make the drugs.It's quite a lot more than the raw ingredients ($0.11 according to the OP), but a lot less than the price for the consumer.
As for 2&3, probably not 100% true.
Most of the money probably goes into the $400 million research for the next drug.

(If it really costs $400 million then that's even more ludicrous than the cost they are sold for)

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: Brutuskend

Originally posted by: Mwilding

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
400 mil to get the FDA to approve the drug?? What, so drug companies buy approval? Is that how the FDA works!?

No, one has to prove to the FDA that a drug is both safe and effective. The cost of doing this is around $400 million dollars.

So why do we (the US) have to foot the bill when they sell the same drugs to other countries for a fraction of the cost? Let THEM carry the R&D costs, or at least a fair percentage of them!

Very good point.

 

[StageLeft]

Dumbest numbers EVER. Everybody knows that drug companies have to recoup money from R&D. I won't pretend that they're doing badly, but so what if a pill I pay $8 for costs them only $.02 to make. They had to R&D the thing and push it through FDA.

 

[Lico]

Does it really matter how much the raw materials cost? How much did the raw materials for your car cost? Drug companies have to charge a lot -- R&D is rediculously expensive, less than 1% of drugs investigated is sold, and it costs a lot to investigate drugs. The FDA doesn't do trials, the company does and then gives the FDA the results, and if the FDA doesn't like them the company has to do more.