Why are the costs of prescription drugs so high? While I have prescribed thousands of them, I can’t offer an intelligent answer to this inquiry. Of course, all the players in this game – the pharmaceutical companies, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, insurance companies, consumer activists and the government- offer their respective bromides, where does the truth lie? While I don’t fully understand it, and I don’t know how to fix it, we all know that the system is broken. More than ever before in my career, I am seeing patients who cannot afford the medicines I prescribe for them. In the last few weeks of this writing, 3 patients with colitis, a condition where the large bowel is inflamed, called me to complain about the cost of their new medicine. The annual cost was in the $2,500 - $3,000 range, which is way out of range for normal folks. While I was only focused on the colitis drug, many of these patients face prohibitive costs over multiple medicines. All of these patients had
MD Whistleblower presents vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. We peek 'behind the medical curtain' and deliver candor and controversy in every post.