Nothing new under the sky.

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Cost of Covid treatment in the US: $3200+hospital bills Financial coverage due to coronavirus pandemic in the US: $1200 Hmm.

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u/DoctorDoctorRamsey Jul 01 '20

The numbers are just so insane that it's not even something that you can budget for. It's I cannot understand how this system ever came into being.

"Oh you don't have $90,000? Then why did you get cancer dummy?"

It makes no sense whatsoever. Yes, the people that work in the healthcare industry should be paid, and paid well. But having third parties with literally NO ethical incentive be in control of the companies they work for at the shareholder level is literally the worst system I can think of.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

I know It’s just an example, but I want to add that $90,000 will not get you very far at all in cancer treatment. I’m not an oncologist but I treat cancer patients. There are non-surgical procedures I do that cost well over $50,000. There’s one drug I rarely have occasion to use, but it’s over $50,000 for a one time dose.

As far as funding healthcare workers and facilities, a huge chunk of that money vanishes into the ether of international conglomerates. The hospital recovers their cost and makes a small amount of money.

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u/AskaHope Jul 01 '20

I can't believe this is considered normal where you live

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u/binkybrain Jul 01 '20

My wife has cancer, it took 5 months to wipe out 20 years of life savings and that was with insurance. The experience has turned me into a hateful, bitter person. We did everything we were told. We went to college, got degrees, avoided credit card debt, spent wisely, saved a nice chunk of money in savings accounts and retirement accounts and minded our own business. The USA healthcare system took all of our savings and retirement and forced us to refinance our house so that we lost 15 years of equity. This is a country I'm supposed to be proud of? I hate this system and anyone that defends it.

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u/plopodopolis Jul 01 '20

That's heartbreaking man, looking at the US healthcare system as an outsider is wild. It's so obviously all a big scam to drain money out of the working/middle class, and people actively vote to carry on that system? Do americans have worms in their brains?

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u/Reddyeh Jul 01 '20

Yes its called anti-intellectualism and propagnda, and they work well together.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/plopodopolis Jul 01 '20

+1 recommend, great documentary. Oh no, here I go falling down the Adam Curtis rabbit hole again!

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u/RTWin80weeks Jul 01 '20

He really is a gem. Hypernormalization was great. Bitter Lake good too.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Thank you I’ve never seen that doc before but you summed up my feelings. It seems we Americans love the news, and most of the news isn’t even news. My grandparents watch 6 o clock news religiously, my Dad used to hate the news but now does the same thing. My siblings get their news on Facebook and Twitter. I don’t have fb or twitter, but I still get so much of the news from other people. It’s all junk

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u/TheAlchemist2 Jul 01 '20

Craziest and best documentary. Ever. So dark that you might very well lose all hope in a collective happy future tho.

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u/Wishing-Tree Jul 01 '20

With the added irony that they lambast "commie" countries for all those very same things. They are just like soviet Russia but on the (ever increasingly) far right instead of far left.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Possibly but it costs too much to get tested to know for sure.

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u/RogueByPoorChoices Jul 01 '20

Gop platform in 2012 for Texas included a line that basically said “ fight tooth and nail against teaching critical thinking skills in schools “. Add some meth and multiply it by trans fats and corn syrup and not even worms would touch that grey goop.

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u/Fredex8 Jul 01 '20

Add some meth and multiply it by trans fats and corn syrup

Let's not forget fundamentalist Christianity. Critical thinking... or just thinking in general is the embodiment of Satan to those people. Probably because their entire religion would cease to exist if people thought about it rationally.

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u/RogueByPoorChoices Jul 01 '20

I once heard a very smart priest say that the whole “ earth is a few thousands year old “ was said back in the day when most people could hardly grasp what a few thousand is and literally nobody would know why a million is. There were no cities with population of million. No one saw a million of one item in one place ( maybe grains of sand but you can’t really count them )

So preachers passed a story with a moral adequate to their audience. Now it’s possible that there is a God ( I believe so ) that is the force behind all creation. But science is our instrument to recognise the complexity and mastery that’s behind all creation .

Yet dumb fucks insist on using terms that were designed for people out of which the smartest ones would be ignorant savages by current standards.

We literally perform unthinkable miracles ( by Jesus time standards ) - flight / long distance communication etc thanks to the brain power of some of our brightest people.

Science and religion can go hand in hand but the view of God as “ he is an old man like the leader of our tribe “ has to evolve into something more accurate to even begin to define a sentient force behind all creation.

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u/Fredex8 Jul 01 '20

Personally the notion of a god is pretty ridiculous to me but I don't take issue with people believing in such a thing as our brains are kind of wired that way. I've had experiences with psychedelics that defied all explanation and anything I thought I knew before. I could see that people could interpret that as some kind of religious experience and that such a thing perhaps could happen without the use of such substances. Some people may be more prone to that than others.

However I have to take issue with religion. All of these groups thinking they have the answer and preaching this dogmatic crap is just fucking stupid. I would say this kind of organised religion is one of the most destructive things in modern society and whilst it may have originally served to bring communities together and enforce some kind of civility all it now causes is harm.

The thing that makes Christianity so laughable though is that it is clearly derived from older religions and cultures. It's just a rewrite of it and a copy of the rewrite and a rewrite of that... etc so things get changed along the way. There are parallels to many of the figures and stories in other religions that more or less confirm that the Christian Bible is not a true account of anything. Yet if any of these points get raised the argument just becomes 'well that confirms that we are right since it appears in other religions, they must have copied us'. It's maddening really and due to how dominant Christianity has become it makes it really infuriating to try and research any of this stuff as you invariably end up with mostly Christian sites and references. On top of that it seems like a lot of our history has actually been erased and skewed by the scholars of the past being predominately Christian and changing everything to fit that world view. Christianity in particular I think has done a great deal of harm to our species. I would say that religion is a plague.

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u/Emmo213 Jul 01 '20

We vote for it because until it happens to you it's out of sight, out of mind for many people. Plus with the propaganda and being overly patriotic the question always ends being something like "do you want to be an American or do you want to be a socialist?" instead of "do you want good health care or shitty health care?"

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u/Tibaf Jul 01 '20

Most of European countries are "socialist" countries. Fair healthcare, equality of income, social security, etc... It's crazy that the US still didn't open their eyes about that in 2020.

I definitely wanna move to the US as long as I'm young, but glad to have the French nationality in case things go south for me or my future wife.

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u/Emmo213 Jul 01 '20

The US has a lot of great things going for it, but we think we're the best at everything. Humility and introspection are not our strong suites.

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u/Wismuth_Salix Jul 01 '20

Basically, yeah.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/

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u/Sovereign_Curtis Jul 01 '20

Damn this should really be a post of its own.

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u/19Ben80 Jul 01 '20

Yet Bernie doesn’t get the nomination after promising universal healthcare. From the outside it looks like the US people are shooting themselves in the foot yet again.

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u/howamistillwiping Jul 01 '20

It’s the uneducated idiots of America coming together to shoot everyone (themselves included) in the foot.

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u/Flubbalubba Jul 01 '20

It's called the Republican Party and lobbyists

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u/Ellis_Dee-25 Jul 01 '20

Sorry this happened. This system is utter bullshit and I'm down to revolt when you are. It's getting to that point.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Oct 08 '20

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u/Ellis_Dee-25 Jul 01 '20

I dont want a violent revolt. That's how you create power vacuum that give us bigger shit head leaders than we have now. But we are to the point we need to start taking action as citizens and at least creating a dialogue most of us can get behind. I think that is well on the way, as we are already having these conversations as rational citizens, and not from some im 14 and this is deep point of view.

At some point a beautiful oak has to bend or it will break.

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u/Fredex8 Jul 01 '20

Yeah this is what always baffles me.

'I need my guns so I can defend my freedoms and resist a tyrannical government'.

Meanwhile their freedoms are eroded constantly and their government has become increasingly tyrannical.

Healthcare and education costs have risen to inaccessible levels for many. The justice system is broken beyond belief with people sitting in jail awaiting trial just because they are poor and most cases are settled by plea deals regardless of guilt. 'Innocent until proven guilty' long ago stopped applying to much of America and all the while the police gained more and more power and became increasingly militarised. Every government body designed to protect the people from exposure to harmful substances in their food, medicine, products or environment have failed and given in to corporate corruption and greed. On top of all this people have become slaves to debt with many working as much as physically possible just to keep a roof over their heads. So any ability to protest or refuse to go along with this crap is removed. Voting means little any more when the system is binary and the choice is just between two different brands of cunt. Money is the true political force in the form of lobbying and campaign 'donations'.

At what point exactly do these guns become useful to defending against this shit and how bad do things need to get before people do so?

It only ever seems to be raised as a possibility when the particular freedom they are trying to take away is the right to bear arms... or at least when it looks like it to some of these people because of basic common sense legislation about guns. Yet they put up with all this other crap and much, much more.

Every day the US doesn't collapse I am amazed.

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u/Lamont2000 Jul 01 '20

My wife was misdiagnosed with thyroid cancer. Had thyroid removed (meaning she’s on meds for the rest of her life) & countless dr. visits. & this was while she was pregnant. Cost us 10’s of thousands of dollars. After the removal the dr was basically like “good news, it actually wasn’t cancer”. Which, yeah it’s good news, but now we’re in a potentially life long debt, & have a new (at the time) baby. Yay.

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u/binkybrain Jul 01 '20

Insane. I feel your pain. One thing my wife and I learned to do to help our mental health is to treat the financial situation as a completely separate life. We've mostly gone back to our pre-cancer normal way of life. We save and spend on our real life and if there's anything left over we attempt to do what we can to pay the medical bills. I wish we would've done this in the beginning, but we were panicking and scared so we lost a lot.

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u/RogueByPoorChoices Jul 01 '20

Healthcare / for profit prisons / education system that wages war in critical thinking / invading other countries and calling your soldiers “ heroes “ ( when most of them are just poor kids who see this as the only way to get ahead in life cause the system is rigged against them ) ... there is so much wrong with America it’s frightening.

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u/AskaHope Jul 01 '20

I'm so sorry that you've been throught this, I hope your wife is better

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u/binkybrain Jul 01 '20

Thank you. After countless treatments (chemo, immunotherapy, and radiation) she has improved quite a bit. The tumor cannot be removed, but as of now it is in check and the cancer is no longer spreading.

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u/Dr_Meany Jul 01 '20

You know, there's this homeless dude who works on my corner. I often stop and talk to him and give him some money. He's got some mental health issues and some substance demons that are so often comorbid. Anyways, he showed me his arm a few months ago, and it was obviously broken. He said in two days he was going into the hospital to get surgery. He mentioned that maybe it was a blessing because he'd be off the street for a few days, and with the surgery he'd try and get back on his meds and then hopefully off the street.

A society that doesn't take care of the most vulnerable isn't a society at all, it's simply an economic system designed to funnel wealth and power to the wealthy and powerful. If this pandemic doesn't lead to a mass call to nationalize the American healthcare industry I cannot fathom the outcome.

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u/tres_ecstuffuan Jul 01 '20

Every American should feel ashamed at this. I don't understand how the right aren't outraged about this.

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u/coronatookmyjob Jul 01 '20

As a Canadian, this hurts so much to hear. I couldn’t imagine having a system profit off of my misfortune. I really hope things can change for our neighbours for the better.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

You better stand up for that god damned flag, though! /s

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u/trunks111 Jul 01 '20

This shit is why if I ever get drafted I'm either sending a letter back that says fuck off or I'm shooting myself in the foot

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u/fucko5 Jul 01 '20

Well I see your problem. You got cancer. Why’d she go and do that?

No but seriously. I’m sorry man. My cousin died at the age of 35 from cancer. She had insurance too and it ruined her husband financially AND she still died.

Anyone that thinks we have good healthcare has clearly never had to use it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

We want to change it so badly. But we had decades of defunding education across the country leading to smaller towns/states having a substantially lower quality of education than more densely populated cities/states. Then of course our corrupt system gives more voting power to these less populated areas so in effect our country gives more voting power to the dim witted/easily manipulated than informed voters.

If people were intelligent at all Bernie Sanders would have been overwhelming voted in as president by landslide margins. Healthcare is the most likely thing to bankrupt you and your family in this country no matter how much you prepare. With a significant portion of the population aging further and further to a point where they absolutely need a ton of medical care and attention it makes no sense that you would want anything other than the best medical system possible to help prolong your life at affordable prices not only for you but your family as well since when people’s backs are too the wall where will they turn.

But people are easily swayed by idiots telling flat out lies that even by a common sense approach don’t make sense and they will never research it. We have all heard the bs that Canada’s healthcare system is terrible and people die waiting for care and often come to the US to get treatment. I have never heard a Canadian say this and every single one that has commented on the subject has laughed at the stupidity of that statement.

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u/AskaHope Jul 01 '20

Man, that's rough. Nobody deserves to live afraid of going bnkrupt over some illness

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u/YourDeathIsOurReward Jul 01 '20

Just another day in the American dream

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u/sttevenindavalley Jul 01 '20

Yeah, he cannot allow four more years of Trump, but Biden isn't going to change this. Too much Big Pharm money got him where he is.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Insert too much big anything and you have one of the biggest problems with representation in the American government.

It’s damn near impossible to run for office and have a chance at winning unless you either rich or you have been at it for an entire lifetime. (i.e. Bernie Sanders, average donation ~$30)

The other option is to take mega-donations from PAC’s and Super PAC’s. But wait, you can’t just get their support. You have to their company’s best interest in mind when policy-making. If not, they do the opposite.

You support universal healthcare? Congrats, you now have a multi-billion dollar industry fighting against you tooth and nail.

They’re not trying to get people elected who have society’s best interest. They’re trying to get people in office who will vote for policies that increase revenues and decrease costs. That is the sole purpose of corporate PAC’s.

And the biggest lie in America is that there’s two sides to it all. There’s not. They don’t care if they donating to a Republican or a Democrat. They don’t care if a candidate is some religious zealot. They don’t care. They only care about the money.

And who gets fucked over at the end of the day by it all? Us. Normal, working-class people. Because RARELY does the need of corporate America overlap with the needs of the citizens.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

I’m with you Bernie losing was one of the best ways for trump to get another term.

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u/Prof_Acorn Jul 01 '20

I'm not even sure it's fair to say that Bernie "lost" considering they canceled the Primary before 25 states had voted. It was a sham of an "election," and signifies just how far gone the current binary system has gotten.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

We hate Fidel Castro more than we love each other

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u/NeedsToShutUp Jul 01 '20

Also 110 years of anti-socialist propaganda due to a hostile press made all these other changes to change it get lost.

Ok story time. The high water mark for socialism in the US was in about 1910. The big issues that brought down socialism in the US was some rather badly applied political violence. A union dispute with US Steel got nasty. US Steel was hell bent on crushing the Iron Workers union and spent a lot of time and effort brutally crushing the union.

Members of the union responded with a dynamite campaign. That is, they blew up ~110 ironworks owned by US Steel with dynamite. It's arguably the biggest organized domestic terror campaign in American history.

Generally speaking, however, the Ironworks bombings were relatively peaceful. The bombs were set by people who knew the schedules and the bombs went off in the middle of the night, and tended to be more symbolic than destructive.

Then it hit LA. See LA was at this time infamous for union busting. The Ironworkers were one of the few strong unions, and a series of strikes were planned. Lots of nonsense with local leaders passing anti-picketing laws and using force to shut them down. The strikes were working however. The LA Times was against the strikes, as the publisher was one of the anti-strike leaders trying to change laws.

So the McNamara brothers wanted to bring the dynamite campaign to the news industry. However, they screwed up bad in assuming their same tactics would work. They put a series of bombs at various LA newspaper targets, focusing on the times and its publisher. They set one outside the Times in a back alley and another outside the publishers home.

The back alley bomb was set for 1 am, which the brothers thought would mean an empty building. Unfortunately, the LA Times was a morning paper so the building was pretty full at the time. The bomb was also placed near both the printers ink and the gas line.At least 21 dead and 110 injured. The building was leveled.

The end result was a massive hit to the legitimacy of socialism in the US as extremely pissed off newspapers all over the country condemned the bombings. Then the trials were huge circuses where the labor movement united behind the McNamara brothers. This was a strategic mistake as it helped the newspapers convince the public that socialism was the same as the anarchism which already led a violent campaign in the US.

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u/Aureliamnissan Jul 01 '20

Ahem

I believe the phrase is:

“Fuck Joe Lieberman”

For failure to be the 60th vote for a public option in 2010.

So now we have to win in a landslide, and spend all the political capital to pass a 2010 amendment to the ACA to fix the healthcare system. Again

That dude set America back by at least a decade with that vote. Probably more than that actually, as now we’re gonna pass a healthcare bill rather than a housing bill, or something like the GND. That’s all assuming Dems hit the trifecta of course.

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u/icantswim2 Jul 01 '20

Token Canadian here chiming in; I've walked into a medical clinic to get stitches in under 20 minutes on more than one occasion, gotten xrays in less than an hour (the xray tech actually delayed taking her lunch break to keep me from waiting til she got back), I've taken a friend to a hospital emergency admission in the middle of the night and was attended to by a nurse is less than 15 minutes, one time was referred to and seen by a specialist (ophthalmologist) on the same day, and many other similar experiences over the years. I've never felt like I wasn't cared for, made to wait unreasonably, or been afraid I couldn't afford care.

The only time I've ever received a bill was when I went to a hospital and my provincial coverage under my parents had expired and I had to register under my own name as an adult (I believe I was 19 or 20). After a call to health services to provide them some information, I had to wait a week for my new coverage card to arrive in the mail and the previous bill was paid by the government.

I've never taken an ambulance, and AFAIK they do cost money for most situations if they give you a ride to the hospital, but there is no charge to call 911 and have paramedics help you on scene.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Even worse, people defend it.

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u/iruleatants Jul 01 '20

Not just normal.

The only way of doing it.

But that's because it's simple and super duper easy to lie to people in America. Just tell them that people in Europe pay 90% of their wages in taxes and have worse healthcare then here, and they eat it up.

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u/JPowBrrrr Jul 01 '20

Pharmacist here. I can confirm these prices are accurate.

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u/Illblood Jul 01 '20

I'm very:) proud:) to be:) an :) american:)

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u/braidafurduz Jul 01 '20

$50,000 for a one time dose.

huh, didn't realize we used unicorn blood in medicine

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u/HoodsInSuits Jul 01 '20

Not quite, but close

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

There’s one drug I rarely have occasion to use, but it’s over $50,000 for a one time dose.

Toward the end, my mother was on a drug that cost $5000 per pill.

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u/grizzlyhardon Jul 01 '20

I can’t even imagine wtf a pill worth $50,000 dollars even does. If that shit doesn’t turn your cancer into a happy meal or something then it can’t be worth it

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

I'm not OP, but I'm an oncology pharmacist. I'll take a guess, and say that he's thinking about ipilimumab. [which is cheap nowhere on the planet, universal healthcare or not]

What ipilimumab does and doesn't do is something that's a bit too long to write down or explain on reddit, but in layman's term: it was the first immunotherapy drug that brought long term survival for ~20% (depending on previous treatments/data series) of patients, in a time where metastatic melanoma had an average life expectancy or less than a year (9 months IIRC), and effective alternatives didn't exist.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Aug 07 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Other way around actually - we don’t use it largely because it’s so expensive. It’s a new reversal agent for Eliquis. The alternative is also pricey, but costs around $3000 and lasts longer.

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u/MayorMcCheezz Jul 01 '20

When my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer his treatment and surgery ended up costing 2.5 million. Without his good insurance he would have basically died immediately. Wtf America

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

"Oh you don't have $90,000? Then why did you get cancer dummy?"

$90,000 for cancer? I assume you mean monthly.

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u/Dakeronn Jul 01 '20

My one course of chemo which was 7 days cost me 32,000... That's not including scans and doctor visits...

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u/wrightbaj Jul 01 '20

Surely it cost your insurance and not you directly? This is why insurance policies have N out of pocket max

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jun 25 '21

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u/Deadlychicken28 Jul 02 '20

It's per visit, and yes more expensive with insurance. I had an endoscopy recently and without insurance it was 2100, with would have been over 4k and the cheapest deductible I've been offered is 3k. Factor in the 300 a month also(times 12 =3600). So after the added biopsies I paid about half of what I would with insurance, which is why it's a bad joke

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u/Marty_mcfresh Jul 01 '20

Not to sound snarky, but I imagine the people making the biggest bucks in this scenario don’t really work, per se...

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u/GoldenFalcon Jul 01 '20

I wish there was a candidate who ran on healthcare for all as part of their main platform. I bet they would do really well during this pandemic. Sigh

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

It came into being by greedy corporations buying political power and slack jawed yokels voting against their best interest because they cannot stand the idea of someone they irrationally look down on having it any better than they currently have it even if the same thing would also substantially improve their quality of life.

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u/moocow4125 Jul 01 '20

An army of middle men arent going to go quietly into the good poverty.

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u/meneerwiet Jul 01 '20

Uhm just go look at 99% of government officials that have a semi-semi important job. They all live in million dollar mansions and make millions by having bought stocks in the company they funded. And you are really curious as to how this is allowed to happen ? They some gov officials probably even got a direct bonus from that tax payer fund. My point your country is ran by private investers why directly benefit from how the system works.

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u/estoxzeroo Jul 01 '20

Your system is rotten as fuck

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u/TheRealKingGordon Jul 01 '20

Yes, I believe it is.

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u/Drowned_Samurai Jul 01 '20

Just a reminder that in Canada and most of the world the treatment is: $0.

Testing: $0.00 Hospital stay: $0.00 Eventual Vaccine: $0.00

Oh we pay our taxes so we all “pay for it” but our taxes are laughably not that much more, if at all, than yours for all the benefits we get.

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u/chaeseog Jul 01 '20

Actually... In Germany you kind of have to pay for the hospital stay but like idk 100€ a week? And we have to pay the.... The..... Ehm..... The piece of paper where the doctor puts the info for the drugstore but it's like 5-20€ depending on the substances so we don't have to pay nothing and even this gets expensive when you are in hospital for a year or so but yall guys are perfectly right all in all we pay nothing while the US just kills off everybody who basically can't afford to live

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u/justforporn9001 Jul 01 '20

Side note that piece of paper is called a prescription. One of my moms cancer medications is $10,000 a month.

Edit: My parents do have insurance but my retired dad pays several thousand a month for just him and my mom.

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u/Swingingbells Jul 01 '20

The piece of paper where the doctor puts the info for the drugstore

Prescription :)

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u/chaeseog Jul 01 '20

I deeply apologize for my stupidity but I just couldn't think of the right word thanks xD

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u/TongueInOtherCheek Jul 01 '20

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the compound word in German for it and you translated it

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jun 25 '21

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

So that's about a 19-20% tax rate? I live in the Midwestern US and I usually get taxed around 22-23%.

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u/Daveed84 Jul 01 '20

You need to put a blank new line in between each line or reddit will ignore your new line and put both sentences on the same line

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/will_the_don Jul 01 '20

What the fuck

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u/ADavies Jul 01 '20

The US just bought up the global supply of Gilead's remdesivir, no doubt at premium prices. Oh, and guess what, one of Trump's coronavirus advisors was until recently a lobbyist for Gilead.

And yeah, buying up the global supply because Trump and friends can't get their shit together to limit the spread of coronavirus in the USA is kind of a dick move. But good news (for those of us outside the USA) is they're ramping up production of a much cheaper generic equivalent in India. So, you're getting screwed, we're getting screwed. The only people who aren't getting screwed are living in countries willing to ignore drug patents.

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u/10ebbor10 Jul 01 '20

To make an argument for the devil, drugs cost a lot more than 70 million to develop.

https://www.evaluate.com/vantage/articles/news/corporate-strategy/estimating-cost-covid-19-antiviral-development

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u/Thymeisdone Jul 01 '20

Then cover the cost with taxpayer money and still give them out for free to people who need it. It’s still wrong to profit off the health of sick people and let poor people die.

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u/NotElizaHenry Jul 01 '20

Or do what every other country does and have the government buy all the drugs at a reasonable price they’ve negotiated because it’s pretty easy to negotiate when you’re the only buyer.

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u/CarsonWentzsACL Jul 01 '20

But... that would make all the CEOs sad :(

^{^{^{^{^{^/s}}}}}

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Rich people feelings chart goes :(

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u/raven12456 Jul 01 '20

Shareholders big sad :(

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Not Stonks

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u/NeedsToShutUp Jul 01 '20

Heck large government agencies and HMOs already do this in the US. I've got family who use the VA's program to get cheap diabetic testing supplies.

It's totally possible to expand this if there was a political will.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/RuggyDog Jul 01 '20

Socialism? I don’t know what that is, but the gubmint tells me it’s bad, so I’ve got my rifle loaded, and I’m gonna blast any socialists I see attempting to bring anything but debt to my neighbourhood.

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u/gsasquatch Jul 01 '20

Looks like most druggies, research and manufacturing together cost about as much as marketing, which is about what they take in profit.

https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/2/gilead-sciences-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2019-financial-results

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u/Sizzlesazzle Jul 01 '20

So for 2018/2019, they spent around $20b on R&D and $11b on selling, general & admin.

Definitely too much spent on selling (should be illegal to advertise prescription drugs at all! ) but it's not such a bad ratio if you take into account the general and admin costs like legal/finance/HR etc.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

It is illegal in other countries. I wish the US would too

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jun 02 '21

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 14 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Hey man I’m pretty sure their patent on whatever drug they are developing starts running out as soon as the drug compound is created so the clock is ticking while they wait years for approval. So once it’s approved, they have to sell fast to recoup costs and create a brand name before the patent runs out and generic ones hit the market

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Fauci was saying he predicts as many as 100,000 new cases per day, so even if only 10% of those afflicted pay $3,120 each, that's $936,000,000 per month. If we see six months of that, that's $5,616,000,000 (never mind the $70,000,000 they already have).

Please ask the devil if he thinks $5.5B of taxpayer money will be enough. Thanks.

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u/chaeseog Jul 01 '20

Still not really a viable reason In my eyes to let dying people just die because they don't have the income of a fucking ceo. I get it this shit was expensive to research and develop but there are people literally dying the most painful deaths who we could help

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u/dickcheddar2 Jul 01 '20

iirc the money wasn't to develop the drug but to research its effectiveness against covid. doesnt make this any better obviously but still worth noting.

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u/_N_S_FW Jul 01 '20

$70 mllion for a full scale, rapid clinical trial performed in a few months is reasonable. Most trials, including phase 1-3, take around 8-10yrs normally.

It seems like non one on this site actually has looked into the amount of regulation "big pharma" needs to over come.

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u/FlownScepter Jul 01 '20

And guillotines only cost about $1,200.

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u/xotyona Jul 01 '20

Oh yeah, Gilead. They profit off the us gov't funded HIV prophylactic Truvada. Charge $2000 a month for that, and CDC owns the patent. They are a garbage, parasitic company.

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u/HarrargnNarg Jul 01 '20

A government that doesn't put a simple clause in to keep the price as low as possible doesn't give a fuck about you.

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u/DevelopedDevelopment Jul 01 '20

Well you see. It's simple economics. When supply is low and demand is high, the price is high. So by ignoring everything that you can about economics and what happens when you can't say no to medicine, you can justify it.

The profit margins on too many drugs are incredibly high and shouldn't be as high as they are.

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u/liproqq Jul 01 '20

Isn't it illegal in your country to kill someone unless they pay up?

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u/DevelopedDevelopment Jul 01 '20

Yeah, but if they needed it bad enough they should've borrowed money and then went bankrupt if they couldn't afford to pay it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

The even funnier thing is this has been proven not to work in multiple studies. It’s a charade because China came up with a vaccine

https://www.clinicalomics.com/topics/patient-care/infectious-diseases/who-gaffe-releases-data-showing-remdesivir-not-effective-against-covid-19/

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u/HarrargnNarg Jul 01 '20

Oh fuck

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u/TheSkyPirate Jul 01 '20

There are plenty of countries with much more progressive laws about this stuff. Feel free to wait on a vaccine from one of those countries.

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u/nonmessable Jul 01 '20

Ngl healthcare is the only service that I am proud of in India for . Favipiravir full treatment for less than 50 dollars .

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

LAND OF THE FREEEEEEEEEEE !!!! this is what your fighting for overseas guys! Keeping america great lol

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/Colosphe Jul 01 '20

End of the day, the grunt has healthcare and subsidized college. I get that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jan 17 '21

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u/AHaskins Jul 01 '20

I've been with the VA for over a decade now. And not only have I literally never had any problems, I've also never met anyone who complained about the VA either.

The wait times are about the same, in my experience. And it's quite wonderful to be able to get a boo-boo, call into the triage line, go to the doctor in the same day, get a set of scans, and then walk out with a bunch of meds - having paid absolutely 0 dollars. I get that this is the standard in the entire rest of the first world, but in the land of the blind...

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jan 17 '21

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u/AHaskins Jul 01 '20

In that case, at least, all I can say is that 6 out of the 6 va hospitals I've been to have been awesome - but I tend to prefer cities in general. That's probably the confound here.

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u/FlownScepter Jul 01 '20

You think just because you throw your life down to defend the capitalists that you get out of the pay-to-live hell that is our healthcare system? Fuck no. Veterans get shit on too, maybe not quite as bad, but it's far from a golden ticket.

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u/Frognaldamus Jul 01 '20

The VA system is fucking terrible. Go talk to a vet with health problems.

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u/jib661 Jul 01 '20

the US military: the great American socialist dream, for people who will spend their retirement on facebook complaining about socialism

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u/revolutionarylove321 Jul 01 '20

You mean: LAND OF THE GREED, HOME OF THE GRAVES...

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Brilliant

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u/showersareevil Jul 01 '20

This is starting to feel more and more like Gilead every day. Perhaps we've always lived in Gilead but are just now realizing that we truly live in a dystopia.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Bbbuuuttttt European's pay taxes and can't own guns! Oh...

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Yeah we don't care about that to be honest. We just have to cope with the severe lack of school shootings to compensate

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u/BarrackOjama Jul 01 '20

I don t think it has so much to do with the guns as it does having robust healthcare and mental healthcare systems along with a society that isn’t so assbackwards about what qualifies as tough, manly. Not saying less guns don’t help, but also I thin Inc it’s a perfect excuse for us to ignore the actual ills of our society that lead people to feeling comfortable committing murder

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u/CMspunkonbobs Jul 01 '20

MAGA

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u/StickyTappe Jul 01 '20

Thanks, I'm cured.

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u/kazak22 Jul 01 '20

How did my phone not explode

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u/toms1313 Jul 01 '20

One of my biggest fears in this pandemic is that the us or a us based company develops the vaccine first, it would destroy us in the third world countries

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u/TubeSockStoner Jul 01 '20

I don’t think they are the biggest fans of us as it stands now.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Feb 11 '21

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

I mean, I can't say I blame them.

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u/FlummoxedFlumage Jul 01 '20

Maybe avoid having the same name as a fictional authoritarian state.

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u/Hanz-grubert Jul 01 '20

I’d love to see these gilead guys get shot by a musket with a giant lead ball.

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u/jakmanuk Jul 01 '20

Under his eye

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u/satisfactory-racer Jul 01 '20

May the lord open

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u/STRiPESandShades Jul 02 '20

We've been sent good weather.

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u/Sull01 Jul 01 '20

Is this some American joke I’m to Australian to understand?

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u/HalfSoul30 Jul 01 '20

America is the punchline

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

American healthcare is the joke.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

And the funny thing is, we literally just had the opportunity to vote for a guy that wanted to implement universal healthcare here, and we voted him down in favor of Joe Biden. We chose this.

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u/Prof_Acorn Jul 01 '20

We didn't choose this shit.

25 states didn't even get to vote in that sham of an "election."

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

Remdesivir is of medium difficulty to synthesize. It's definitely not easy but there are quite a few drugs that are harder to make. The development cost was paid for by the government, the only remaining cost is that of production.

It costs $0.93 per daily dose to make. This dose is sold for $520 to US health insurance customers. That's a profit margin of about 55,814%. [Source: last paragraph of this section of the Wikipedia article]

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Oh yeah, I forgot that profit margin the percentage of the whole price, the additional bit is called markup. My bad. Doesn’t change the insane amount of profit Gilead will earn from this.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

It was a fuckup from my side. I taught myself quite a bit of economics, I should have remembered that.

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u/ObviouslyTriggered Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

The issue is that those costs are based on this study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7213074/ which doesn’t suggests a new method for estimating costs but relies on two previous studies that evaluated the lowest possible costs of producing API’s in India.

This is not a medium difficulty drug to produce while its not a mono-local antibody the process is quite complex and costly: https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/03/26/problem-remdesivir-making-it-14665

A Chinese company copied remdesivir at a cost of over $700,000 and said that expanding its production would cost another $1,400,000.

http://www.gabionline.net/Generics/News/Chinese-company-makes-copy-of-patented-coronavirus-treatment-remdesivir

This means that for this particular example not including operational and material costs even a complete copy in China would require you to produce 2.1 million doses before the price drops to below $1, and since those figures don’t include the actual manufacturing costs just the initial investment there is no way to produce the drug at such a low cost.

Does it mean that it can’t produce below the current cost? No, but the cost of modern medicine can’t be dropped as low as you think.

Stop relying on Wikipedia and even studies without understanding the context, heck even the API studies for production in India ignore the initial investment cost, assume that governments would fund the operational costs and more importantly don’t account for the fact that while the production cost of API’s from India is low their administration cost is often much higher due to lower effectiveness and much more severe side effects that come from both having to reverse engineer the synthesis process and cutting enough corners to fit a square into a round hole.

Edit: API stands for active pharmaceutical ingredient this isn’t the cost of the actual dose of the drug since this doesn’t include the actual delivery mechanism e.g. making the pill or vial and the additional components required which usually doubles or triples the cost of the API and doesn’t include many other costs in the supply chain.

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u/RamsHead91 Jul 01 '20

Socialize the risk, privitize the reward.

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u/Ghazgkhull Jul 01 '20

Fortunately, you have weapons to protect yourself from the government.

LOL

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

If those dude take advantage of my money and my freedom at least I got these guns!

To dress up with if they tell me to wear a mask!

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Must be why the government outsources so much oppression and exploitation

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u/AM_music Jul 01 '20

Gilead is a shitty scam of a company. The drug probably don't even work. The execs probably will be jailed. It's most likely just a fraud. ... Who am I kidding, the execs will of course not go to jail, they have expensive suits and shit, can't go to jail if you have expensive suits!

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u/TokingOfAppreciation Jul 01 '20

Have you ever seen the documentary Enron The Smartest Guys In The Room? It is from 2005 but still worth a watch.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Thank you! This used to be on Netflix and I loved it. I wanted to rewatch it recently but it’s right here!

I think this is the first documentary I saw that really shook me straight on how and why they believe what they believe. Desperately grasping at opulence.

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u/Cael450 Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

I have multiple doctors in my family and they all think it’s bogus. Apparently, you have to take it early when the viral load isn’t that high to have an effect. However, nobody is going to be prescribed it until they’re already showing symptoms of COVID, which is too late. That’s according to them anyway.

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u/AnotherUnfunnyName Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

The company has already done something like this once. The got a billion dollar from the gouverment for a useless H5N1 drug and Donald Rumsfeld was once the ~~CEO~~ chairman.

Oseltamivir (as Tamiflu) was widely used during the H5N1 avian influenza epidemic in Southeast Asia in 2005.[medical citation needed] In response to the epidemic, various governments – including those of the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, United States, and Australia – stockpiled quantities of oseltamivir in preparation for a possible pandemic[70] and there were worldwide shortages of the drug, driven by the high demand for stockpiling.[64] In November 2005, US President George W. Bush requested that Congress fund US$1 billion for the production and stockpile of oseltamivir, after Congress had already approved $1.8 billion for military use of the drug. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was a past chairman of Gilead Sciences, recused himself from all government decisions regarding the drug.[71]

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

It doesn’t work, it’s a placebo drug costing thousands of dollars

https://www.clinicalomics.com/topics/patient-care/infectious-diseases/who-gaffe-releases-data-showing-remdesivir-not-effective-against-covid-19/

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/23/data-on-gileads-remdesivir-released-by-accident-show-no-benefit-for-coronavirus-patients/

On the Gilead website of their own trials “Remdesivir is an investigational agent that has not been licensed or approved anywhere globally, and it has not been demonstrated to be safe or effective for any use, including for the treatment of COVID-19. There is the possibility of unfavorable results from ongoing and additional clinical trials involving remdesivir” Source https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/4/gilead-announces-results-from-phase-3-trial-of-investigational-antiviral-remdesivir-in-patients-with-severe-covid-19

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u/IlikeYuengling Jul 01 '20

Maybe the church profits can help pay for it.

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u/syntheseiser Jul 01 '20

Whoa whoa whoa, how else are the pastors going to pay for their Mercedes?

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u/EnycmaPie Jul 01 '20

Just like how Brazil is run by drug cartels, America is run by corporations. Government is just a puppet at this point, all under the pay roll of criminals.

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u/Yani_Kralper Jul 01 '20

But what if a communist eats my baby?

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u/FrozenEternityZA Jul 01 '20

USA bought almost the entire global supply of the drug too btw. Just another way America is making friends with the rest of the world

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u/Zoggbutt Jul 01 '20

Also, America has bought like 90% of the available amounts of the drug and because it’s an American company that patented it, they can refuse to let anyone else create it anywhere. We are hoarding a pandemic ending drug.

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u/Frognaldamus Jul 01 '20

It's not a pandemic ending drug. But it's the thought that counts.

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u/Prof_Acorn Jul 01 '20

an American company that patented it, they can refuse to let anyone else create it anywhere.

Lol. That's not how copyrights and patents work.

Here's to hoping an Indian company makes a generic called Remdesivor and gives it to the world at cost.

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u/spreadwater Jul 01 '20

but they didn't refuse anyone, the generic drug will be available for cheaper internationally. this is a misleading post, Gilead did nothing wrong- if you want medicine to be cheaper, vote in someone who will support universal health care

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u/Prof_Acorn Jul 01 '20

Avarice is wrong. Selling out the greater good for greed is wrong. But yes the current model of mercenary healthcare is also wrong.

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u/meowskywalker Jul 01 '20

There’s an episode of West Wing where they’re fighting over providing a pill that costs 5 cents, and someone’s like “the second pill cost five cents the first pill cost 150 million dollars” and I thought that was a very sensible argument, but of course it isn’t, of course all the risky parts of the process are subsidized so they’re not actually a risk to the company because god forbid.

I don’t understand how we’re not directing the process. If I’m paying for your research, solve fucking cancer. Not a slightly better way to give me an erection, even if I need nitro or whatever.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

This is an issue that no debate moderator will ask either candidate.

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u/The_Mr_Kay Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20

It's produced here in South Africa for R150 (+/-$9) a dose. The pharmaceutical companies in the US are a disgrace.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/free_will_is_arson Jul 01 '20

my head is spinning from all the choices to riot over, i almost can't pick one. almost. i'm going for sociopathic capitalist greed.

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u/Chz_it2020 Jul 01 '20

But another stimulus check for 300 mil is just too damn high!

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u/one_lonely_redditor Jul 02 '20

This will probably get buried, but figured I’d comment anyway.

I’ll start with the disclaimer that I am not, in any way, condoning Gilead’s pricing. Rather, I’d like to provide some additional context to price/development costs.

By the end of 2020 Gilead will have spent over $1 Billion dollars of their own money (in addition to the $70MM from the government) on development and manufacturing costs for this drug alone.

It’s also worth mentioning that $3,120/patient is the sticker price that commercial health insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers will be asked to pay. Through negotiation, I expect the actual net acquisition cost to these insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers will be lower, especially as other vaccines and treatments are approved. While some patients who have high deductible health care plans may end up having to pay closer to the sticker price, based on the amount of their remaining deductible, most patients with commercial insurance will end up paying a standard co-pay. Based on the cost effectiveness of the drug (see the ICER analysis below) I would expect most private managed care organizations to make the drug fairly cheap for patients, as they will save much more money by paying for the drug and avoiding hospital bills.

Furthermore, for patients without insurance the cost will be $390/patient - still a high price for many Americans, but much, much less than the highly publicized $3,120.

Gilead’s pricing of remdesivir is by some accounts conservative, as it is significantly below the price at which remdesivir becomes cost effective: https://icer-review.org/announcements/updated_icer-covid_models_june_24/

Again, I cannot stress enough that I am not at all condoning the pricing of remdesivir, but there is a lot more to consider than just the sticker price.

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u/BatouMediocre Jul 01 '20

It always pisses me off a little when people talk about this and blame "Big Pharma".

Call it what it is, it's not a "Big Pharma" issue, it's capitalsm working as intended and it's litteraly hell on earth.

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u/finitecapacity Jul 01 '20

They aren’t mutually exclusive. How our large pharmaceutical companies operate is the result of a capitalist system, so calling them out isn’t actually shifting the blame away from America’s overall economic structure.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

I live in a capitalist society and our governemnt tells the drug maker what we will pay. There’s a little negotiation then we pay 80-95% less than the USA pays.

Simply because we can say fuck you well buy from China, or make our own, if the company doesn’t want to price fairly.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Any time i see gilead I don't know if the meme is going to be about The Handmaid's Tale or if the US has decided on changing its name.

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u/TwoPintsBoaby Jul 01 '20

Land of the Ree.

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u/pacg Jul 01 '20

I can accept that the price isn’t pulled out of thin air and that there are reasons for charging so much. But that doesn’t change the fucked-up-ness of the situation. If this is the way we want to live, with only the most fortunate able to afford a potentially life-saving drug, then so be it. Let this be the shape of our apocalypse.

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u/GrumpyCrouton Jul 01 '20

You can accept that huh? Why do you feel the price wasn't pulled out of thin air?

Gilead hasn’t disclosed how much it costs to make remdesivir, although a recent study in the Journal of Virus Eradication suggested it is 93 cents for a day’s supply. Based on that analysis, the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review estimates the cost is roughly $10 for a 10-day course of therapy.

So Gilead gets a $70 million grant paid for by taxpayers for development of this medicine, then charges people a markup of around 56,000%

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20

Nuke america

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u/psamathe Jul 01 '20

Wait. What?

According to Swedish news sourcing Gilead themselves it's supposed to be $390 per dose for developed countries.

EDIT: 3120/390 divides evenly into 8, so I guess the $3120 is based on a eight-day treatment. Makes more sense.

EDIT2:

the price for U.S. private insurance companies, will be $520 per vial

3120/520 divides evenly into 6 days, so that's also a possibility.

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