Does anyone pay retail or sticker price for medicines and does no one buy generic drugs?
Only in AARP's real world.
Retail prices for some of the most widely used brand-name prescription drugs shot up more than 8 percent in 2009, even as inflation plummeted to a record low, according to a new AARP analysis of retail drug price trends released today. The AARP Rx Price Watch Report also looked at retail drug prices over the past five years and found some huge increases for popular drugs including the prostate drug Flomax, which nearly doubled in price; Advair and Aricept saw price hikes of 40 percent. During the same period, the consumer price index rose 13.3 percent. The findings show that the cost of prescription drugs—many widely used by those on Medicare—far outstripped the price increases for other consumer goods and services. … The AARP report found that all but six of 217 brand-name prescription drugs had retail price increases exceeding general inflation last year.
Conducted by long time pharma-price schlockmeister, Stephen Schodelmeyer, the "study" ignores the fact that the 217 brand name drugs were actually a smaller number of medications with different doses and that for most, if not all of the drugs, there was a generic alternative. It also ignores the fact that almost no one pays retail or the full cost of a medication or that the retail price includes drugstore mark ups..
Meanwhile, another reliable survey, this from Consumers Union, claimed that 27 percent of people skipped or split medications to save money. Then again, up to half of people who actually have drug coverage skip or stop taking medications. Did Consumers Union consider other reasons than money?
And by the way, it's survey showed that "a whopping 81 percent said they are concerned about the rewards drugmakers give to doctors who write a lot of prescriptions for a company’s drugs. And 72 percent were displeased with payments pharmaceutical companies give to doctors for testimonials or for serving as a company spokesperson for a given drug."
Rewards? Do they mean the pens or the calendars? And how much of a drug do you have prescribe to get such a nifty prize. You see, that's what passes for rewards these days since companies no longer hand out bags of jewelry and cash.
The coverage of these studies in the media was free of any analysis or context. Instead the journalists simply rewrote the press releases of the two organizations and linked to them in blogs... (You can read about both in the Kaiser Healtn News service which also substitutes for health care reporting in major newspapers around the country.)
Way to go.
www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2010/August/26/Drug-prices.aspx
Only in AARP's real world.
Retail prices for some of the most widely used brand-name prescription drugs shot up more than 8 percent in 2009, even as inflation plummeted to a record low, according to a new AARP analysis of retail drug price trends released today. The AARP Rx Price Watch Report also looked at retail drug prices over the past five years and found some huge increases for popular drugs including the prostate drug Flomax, which nearly doubled in price; Advair and Aricept saw price hikes of 40 percent. During the same period, the consumer price index rose 13.3 percent. The findings show that the cost of prescription drugs—many widely used by those on Medicare—far outstripped the price increases for other consumer goods and services. … The AARP report found that all but six of 217 brand-name prescription drugs had retail price increases exceeding general inflation last year.
Conducted by long time pharma-price schlockmeister, Stephen Schodelmeyer, the "study" ignores the fact that the 217 brand name drugs were actually a smaller number of medications with different doses and that for most, if not all of the drugs, there was a generic alternative. It also ignores the fact that almost no one pays retail or the full cost of a medication or that the retail price includes drugstore mark ups..
Meanwhile, another reliable survey, this from Consumers Union, claimed that 27 percent of people skipped or split medications to save money. Then again, up to half of people who actually have drug coverage skip or stop taking medications. Did Consumers Union consider other reasons than money?
And by the way, it's survey showed that "a whopping 81 percent said they are concerned about the rewards drugmakers give to doctors who write a lot of prescriptions for a company’s drugs. And 72 percent were displeased with payments pharmaceutical companies give to doctors for testimonials or for serving as a company spokesperson for a given drug."
Rewards? Do they mean the pens or the calendars? And how much of a drug do you have prescribe to get such a nifty prize. You see, that's what passes for rewards these days since companies no longer hand out bags of jewelry and cash.
The coverage of these studies in the media was free of any analysis or context. Instead the journalists simply rewrote the press releases of the two organizations and linked to them in blogs... (You can read about both in the Kaiser Healtn News service which also substitutes for health care reporting in major newspapers around the country.)
Way to go.
www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2010/August/26/Drug-prices.aspx
