YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE -- Part II

A couple of days ago, the New York Times came out with a story which begins:

The burden of high drug costs weighs most heavily on the sickest Americans.

Drug makers have raised prices on treatments for life-threatening or chronic conditions like multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer. In turn, insurers have shifted more of those costs onto consumers. Saddled with high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs that expose them to a drug's rising list price, many people are paying thousands of dollars a month merely to survive.

For more than a year, President Trump and Democrats in Congress have promised to take action on high drug prices, but despite a flurry of proposals, little has changed.

These are the stories of Americans living daily with the reality of high cost drugs. And there are millions of others just like them.

The article continues with the stories of seven individuals struggling to stay alive.  This is superb reporting. Not once do the reporters resort to statistics -- percentages, patient counts,  and the like.  Statistics tend to distance the reader from the reality, and make the the narrative easier to take.   And that narrative could be ours, for these people are middle-class, having too great an income to qualify for what aid may be available to the poor, yet not having nearly enough to pay for life-saving medications. If any of you reading this is unlucky enough to have such a life-threatening, chronic disease, chances are that none of this is news to you -- you're going through it every day. On the other hand, if you have escaped that fate so far,  I humbly encourage you to click on the link and read what comes up:

The Price They Pay

These are stories about people with no good choices but, to keep breathing, they choose whatever is available. Should they ration dosage? Should they skip a medication entirely and focus on a another, which, in their estimation, might be more likely to keep them alive until they have the money to pay for the drug they've been skipping? "I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place," says one, "and I'm sure a lot of other people are as well."

And the thing is, little or none of this has to do with the costs of development, or of production.  One of subjects needed a drug -- albendazole, an old medication, on the market for years -- the price of which was raised from $6 a pill to $120.  The purchaser said she is furious that she was forced to pay $750 for an old drug. "'They price it because they can,' Mrs Williams said,  'Wall Street decided they could make money off of prescription drugs, which is just scary and depressing.'"  The seller of the drug refused to give the reason for the price hike.  He didn't have to; the reason is obvious. 

Some of these pharmaceutical companies have what they call Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs).  But these are engineered to limit the losses to the company. For example, according to our article, "Novo Nordisk requires low-income Medicare beneficiaries to spend $1000 on drugs in each calendar year before they can qualify for free drugs through its  program. In a cruel irony, many patients don't have that $1000 to spend. 

What I want to know is why these companies offer such programs in the first place. It can't be for humanitarian reasons; their arbitrary jacking up of prices could scarcely qualify them for the encomium "humanitarian." I'm guessing they do it for the same reason that pigs wear lipstick. It's what their PR people term optics. They want to look as good as they can under the circumstances. They want to give cover for the legislators whom they bought with campaign money. And they hope to fool you into thinking they're not  that bad. 

DON'T BE FOOLED! Stand up and tell your legislators -- repeatedly and very loudly -- that you can tell the difference between a politician and a pig, and if they won't move for, and vote for a health system which is NOT profit driven, but driven by good, healthy outcomes for EVERYBODY, then you'll find a legislator who will.

DIO

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