Even at retail (i.e. just walk into pharmacy with your prescription and buy it like you'd buy a coffee) they are £50 per pen/£90 for two [1] ($66/$118 at today's USD-GBP rate)
The weird healthcare system in the US is one of the main reasons I've resisted calls to relocate there for work. Stories like this are just really off putting.
You say you + your insurance pay $110 per pen, so $220 for a set, so you seem to be paying the price as of right before May 2015, and you haven't bought a pen since then. You might be in for a big surprise next time you have to buy one.
Having multiple deadly allergies and needing to purchase EpiPens regularly, their price doesn't seem outrageous to me.
I pay about $10 a pen, insurance pays about $100 per (even after the price increase). That being said, people rarely use this drug. $100 to save your life once a year or so kind of seems like a fair trade.
This seems more like the media is outraged as opposed to the country. All my friends don't even know about this price change, I only know about it because I read the news more often.
In some countries simple medicines get charged at huge rates. Apparently a £20 epipen is hundreds of $USD in USA, not everyone can afford to pay for medicines in their country.
Made in Good Old USA, based of USA Army prototypes.
"But she also acknowledged that high retail prices of EpiPens in the United States effectively subsidize the cost of the devices when they are sold in Europe, at just $100 or $150. Many of the countries there have government-run health-care systems that limit drug prices charged by manufacturers, unlike the U.S."
I just paid for a pair of EpiPens; the generic version was $337 a pair (last I checked, the non-generic version was over $600). I have pretty good health insurance, so I didn't pay that much myself, but my employer paid the rest.
As a baseline, I had the pharmacist look up the equivalent medication for use with a syringe; a ten dose bottle was $5.99. I know, not the same thing. But this confirmed what I'd suspected for years.
I have to assume that the EpiPen delivery mechanism, which is really what we're paying for, is well debugged and optimized and essentially just a matter of ordering parts and assembling them; it would be mind boggling to have a COGs of more than a few dollars, or any significant conversion costs. The cost of the actual medication that the pens contain is apparently about sixty cents on top of that. Mylan is printing money.
Icing on the cake: The pens expire after a year. But you typically can't get pens that last that long, the ones I got already have a few months on them and will have to be replaced before the next school year ends or my son won't be able to attend class (the school is not allowed to administer "expired" medication).
This is an utter and corrupt racket. I'm writing my congressional representatives and senators. Again.
$100 is still outrageously expensive for something that is absolutely essential for some people.
The NHS in the UK pays £52 ($90?) for a two pack of branded EpiPens. Singles of "generics" are available for £26. They are made available to anybody who needs one either for free or the £8 prescription fee.
Possibly my first post, so sorry if I have make faux pas. In the UK the national health service [NHS] engages nationally to negotiate price. They have the concept of the value of a medicine compared to the improved quality of life it brings. As a result generic medicines are priced against their value.
This means that an epipen is priced at £45 or about $60. Google Lloyds pharmacy epipen - UK only search.
I rather like this approach to healthcare, I am not sure about transnational ability to buy this - but to those that need it I hope you can make it work.
My observation is that the UK approach to healthcare has some advantages in its approach, it is not without faults but value for money [affordability] is embedded in delivery.
>you seem to be paying the price as of right before May 2015, and you haven't bought a pen since then. You might be in for a big surprise next time you have to buy one.
Express scripts co-pay has only gone up $0.45 in that time.^1
>Express Scripts says it has been able to hold costs steady for its members: its commercially insured population has seen their co-payments for EpiPen go from $73.05 in January 2015 to $73.50 in July 2016, even though the price of EpiPen rose by 51% over that period of time.
My daughter, like many kids, has an allergy that requires us to have epipens on hand. There was a good article the other day about how the owner of epipen have raised the price of epipen from $57/pen in 2007 to over $400/two-pack of pens today. I don't think you can get just one pen, btw.
I think the difference is they didn't raise the price in one fell swoop. Frogs in boiling water, etc, etc.
Just to frame all this a bit better: in Italy epipens cost… wait for it… ZERO - nil - nada.
You have a diagnose of anaphylactic shock risk? You get epipens. Public healthcare pays for it, therefore everyone pays for it with their taxes.
Without a prescription, you can get one for around 75€, which is already considered criminally expensive.
This is true for thousands other products. So please now tell me again how r&d and other costs justify the US prices for the same drugs that are sold profitably Yet way cheaper in other western markets.
My children have a need for epipens. With our insurance, it is still prohibitively expensive. After hearing about the cost in GB, I'm considering making a trip to London to stock up
I have an EpiPen, just in case, because I keep bees. It is a prescription drug, but government co-pay doesn't kick in because the price is to low. I paid USD120, around DKK800, for one EpiPen.
My guess is that the US prices are higher, because insurance will pick up the bill for most people, allowing the manufacturer rise the prices with little consequence... for most people. Generally speaking Americans tend to pay a high cost for their lack of a national healthcare system, with very little benefit.
The majority of the comments here are interesting to me because they're talking about the cost of an epi-pen after insurance. The problem doesn't seem to be some mismatch of the interplay between drug price and insurance rebate but just how incredibly expensive an epi-pen is in America because of a lack of collective bargaining on price.
For comparison, here in Australia, the dispensed price for an epi-pen is 96.57AUD which includes everything, even the maximum markup from the pharmacist (as far as I understand the pricing mechanisms). Of course, depending on insurance arrangements and personal circumstances you'll end up paying less with a maximum of 38.30AUD out of pocket but that's a different part of the system.
I don't see how the dysfunction is any of the things mentioned in this article as opposed to the ridiculous prices insurance companies and patients are being charged for it. Many drugs expire quickly, are hard to administer, and are difficult to make. All that means is that we need them done well and we need to pay the least we can.
Whenever I visit the states and pop into CVS I am frequently amazed at the sticker prices on some of the dugs there. Things that literally cost pennies per tablet in the UK (generic hayfever tablets, pain killers etc) were absurd prices. 20USD for 7 hayfever tablets? 15 USD for 12 ibuprofen tablets? WTF?! Do not forget to get 12 hayfever tablets for £1.80 (~2USD) from a supermarket before your flight otherwise you'll need to spend 45USD (+tax) at the CVS a block from your hotel.
Do you guys actually pay these prices for this stuff, or is it only forgetful travellers who fall for it and end up paying through the nose because they have no other choice?
Surely you won't be claiming for pain killers for a headache etc on your health insurance? (...although at those prices maybe you should??!)
It feels to me that is pretty criminal to charge those prices at retail - to inflate even more to insurers just seems pretty outrageous.
"When Mylan bought it, EpiPens cost about $57 each."
I can concur. I have a family member I purchase these for. At first, it was like...okay, $50 after insurance. Now $100 after insurance. The thing is...nobody really seems to care until things spiral out of control. Who the hell is watching our backs in America? Is it the FDA, the FTC, Congress (likely too busy defunding AMA to care), the DoJ? No idea. I wonder if gov't agencies like the DoD who stock tons of epipens pay the same prices that we the public do? Does the DoD purchase from another market to get out of the huge sticker price? I'm curious to see how many people in the gov't get around purchasing these in the US for their own agencies yet didn't raise extreme alarm at the ballooning prices for the American consumers.
The weird healthcare system in the US is one of the main reasons I've resisted calls to relocate there for work. Stories like this are just really off putting.
1 - https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen
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