The pharmaceutical industry predicted that if the drug importation proposal succeeded that we would be at risk from unsafe drugs. I think what they meant to say is that the pharmaceutical industry’s profits would be at risk.
The new proposal from Senator Dorgan would have allowed importation of prescription drugs from countries that are verified safe by the FDA. Allowing importation from countries such as Canada, Europe, and Japan, which sell their prescription medications from 35 percent to 55 percent lower do to price controls, would have saved consumers more than $100 billion over the next 10 years.
Even though the bill would put money back into hard working Americans pockets, the bill hit the wall in the Senate, and got shot down with a 51-48 vote. Senators attest that the bill would not be safe, because the drugs would be coming from untested sources.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. According to the New York Times
Senator Dorgan’s office says the industry’s safety alarms are false ones, because his measure would permit exports only from factories approved by the Food and Drug Administration and would assure high-quality imports by setting up a new registration procedure for pharmacies and wholesalers.
If safety isn’t the real reason why the drug import proposal failed, then what is?
According to the Examiner, its because the government has already found a better deal.
The pharmaceutical industry made a deal with the White House to commit 80 billion dollars over the next 10 years to health care reform. The deal was supposedly contingent upon Congress not asking for more cuts in their profits.
The article in the Examiner also pointed out that pharmaceutical sales in 2006 were $289 billion, over half of the global total. If the price of our drugs fell by just 15%, it would save the American consumers over $43 billion annually. This price cut would also allow those who are currently not taking their medication due to cost, to finally be able to afford the medications they need.
So the real reason the drug import proposal failed isn’t because the government is concerned for our safety, they are concerned with profits.
Don’t wait to save on your prescription medications, use Freebee’s comparison shopping search engine to save on the drugs you need today.
Antipsychotic medications are more prevalent now than ever since there introduction in the 1950’s. These medications are used to reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia and give those who suffer from the illness back their lives. The only problem is that like with all drugs, antipsychotic’s can be very costly.
The most popular antipsychotic’s are risperidone (Risperdal), aripiprazole (Abilify), quetiapine (Seroquel), and olanzapine (Zyprexa). Paying for these medications out of pockets can cost anywhere from $300 to $500 dollars for 90 pills. Luckily, you can get them here for much cheaper.
Risperdal 1mg 100 pills for $46.00 Abilify 5mg 100 pills for $64.00 Seroquel 25mg 100 pills for $54.00 Zyprexa 5mg 100 pills for $61.56
Although Freebee Foreign Pharmacies prices on all antipsychotic drugs are drastically cheaper than anywhere online, the cheapest popular brand is Seroquel. Remember, cheapest is not necessarily the best, as each different type of medication affects patients differently. Your doctor will be able to work and figure out which medication is right for you.
No matter which medication you use, there is absolutely no reason why you should be paying the outrageous, inflated prices out of pocket for from your local pharmacy. Join Freebee Foreign Pharmacy today.
Unfortunately, many of those affected by Type 2 Diabetes are without prescription drug coverage and have to pay for there medication out of pocket. So, today I would like to take a look at the average cost of both the brand and generic versions of Metformin online, and compare those prices to the ones in Freebee Foreign Pharmacies database.
Metformin is the most commonly prescribed prescription medication for Type 2 diabetes. Metformin is taken orally, and is only used to treat non-insulin dependent diabetes. It works by lowering blood sugar when it is too high, and by helping restore the way the body uses food to make energy. Glucophage and Glumetza are two of the more popular brand name versions of Metformin.
In order to compare the prices of Metformin, Glucophage, and Glumetza, we must find out what the going rate for each drug is. To do this, I Googled each different brand of Metformin, as well as the generic version, and averaged the price from the first 5 pharmacy results in Google for that brand, then compared the averaged price to the prices in Freebee’s drug database.
Since different pharmacies offer their medication in different amounts, I broke all costs down into price per pill, and used the most commonly prescribed dosage of 850 mg for Metformin and Glucophage, and 500 mg for Glumetza.
As expected, the generic version, Metformin came in with the lowest price per pill average at $.58. Glucophage came in second at $.83 cents per pill, and Glumetza last at $1.13 per pill. Remember, these results were the average of the first 5 pharmacies that came up when searching on google for each brand, which means that safety, quality, and fast delivery are not guaranteed.
Now lets see how freebee’s pharmacies stack up against the competition. The average price of the top 5 pharmacies in our database for Metformin was $.45 cents per pill ($.13 cheaper per pill). As I moved on to the brand versions, the saving just got larger. I found that Glucophage was $.13 per pill ($.70 cheaper per pill) and Glumetza was $.57 per pill ($.56 cheaper per pill)
In conclusion, using Freebee’s comparison shopping search engine you can get the more expensive brand version of Metformin (Glucophage) for $.45 per pill cheaper than the average online pharmacy price for the generic version. When filling a prescription of 300 pills, that is a savings of $300.00! Not to mention that all the pharmacies in our database have been personally checked for both safety and quality, and are licensed in their home countries and verified by independent U.S. authorities.
Why take the risk of getting swindled or hurt from a rogue pharmacy when you can fill your prescription from a safe verified pharmacy for much Cheaper?
Ah, the corner pharmacy. It’s been there for years, it’s just a short drive down the road, and the pharmacists are always so friendly, aren’t they?
I hate to break it to you, but behind those smiling faces at the counter, your corner pharmacy is hiding something from you. Specifically, its prices.
Jacob Milbradt, a pharmacist who blogs, has been writing about the fact that pharmacies often make big — even outrageous — profits on generic medications. The reasons for this include (1) that most people don’t comparison shop among their neighborhood pharmacies; and (2) that people assume that if a pharmacy is inexpensive for one drug, it’s probably relatively inexpensive across the board.
Take Wal-Mart, for example. With all the attention Wal-Mart has received for its $4 generics program, many consumers just assume that Wal-Mart is always going to give them a low price on their prescriptions.
But when Jacob did some comparison shopping for the generic form of Risperdal, he found extreme variations in pricing — and look who was overcharging the most for 90 1mg tablets:
Sams is charging about 30% of Wal-Mart’s price. Sams [owned by Wal-Mart] and Wal-Mart are obviously paying the same amount for this medication . . . yet Wal-Mart is charging an additional $275 compared to Sams.
The pharmacist, who has done this kind of price comparison for many drugs on his blog, generally finding the same wide price variations, laments that buyers must think twice before trusting their corner pharmacy:
People TRUST their pharmacist and pharmacy not to rip them off. Yet that’s exactly what happens every day throughout the nation. When it comes to managing your prescription costs, you have to realize that nearly every other entity only has their own interests in mind. Everyone’s looking out for #1 . . . and you’re left to foot the bill.
So always comparison shop when purchasing prescription drugs. You can save even more money by including Canadian pharmacies in your search.
Last week, the FDA approved the new antipsychotic drug Saphris for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults. Saphris is one of a class of brand-name drugs called “atypical antipsychotics” that includes Risperdal, Abilify, Seroquel and Zyprexa.
These “atypical antipsychotics” are distinguished from older, “typical antipsychotics” that include perphenazine, loxapine, haloperidol, thiothixene, and fluphenazine. All of these drugs have long been available as low-cost generics.
And last year, the first generic atypical antipsychotic — a generic version of Risperdal (risperidone) — hit the market, too. The price for risperidone has dropped dramatically in the past year … although your corner pharmacy isn’t necessarily passing along those savings.
For example, a pharmacist blogger did some research and found that while brand-name Risperdal goes for around $500 for 90 1mg tablets, pharmacies he called quoted him anywhere from $126.68 to $410 for the generic equivalent. He noted that many pharmacies cited the higher brand-name price first, so any generic price would sound good by comparison.
So is your best bet a brand-name antipsychotic, generic risperidone, or one of the older antipsychotic drugs?
Well, let’s compare the newest drug to hit the market — Saphris — with risperidone. According to reports:
In clinical trials with schizophrenia patients, Saphris was effective and well tolerated. Although Saphris demonstrated lower efficacy on positive symptoms than [risperidone] … Schering-Plough’s drug presented fewer adverse events than other atypical antipsychotics and some improvements on negative and cognitive symptoms compared to [risperidone]. However, Saphris’s twice-daily dosing regimen may be perceived to be inconvenient in the light of several other once daily options.
So it looks like a trade-off. The FDA, in announcing its approval of the drug, would only say that Saphris worked better than a placebo. We’ll have to see over time if Saphris proves to be worth paying brand-name prices.
My guess is that in most cases — or at least an increasing number of cases — doctors and psychiatrists are prescribing Risperdal first, and then the pharmacy is filling it as a generic, either as required by the insurance provider or at the customer’s request. While doctors like to have a variety of medications to choose from since all patients react differently, the brand-name antipsychotics face a declining market.
As for the older, “typical” antipsychotics, recent research indicates that they in many cases are similar in effectiveness to the newer drugs.
Bottom line: When you talk with your doctor or psychiatrist about antipsychotic medications, be sure to understand why he recommends a specific drug. Some doctors like to start their patients out on a typical antipsychotic first and move on to an atypical antipsychotic only if the initial treatments fail. But most today go straight to the atypicals. If you are concerned about cost, share this with your doctor so he can take this into account in making a recommendation.
Proposed legislation introduced in Congress on Friday by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (left) could have a huge impact on drug costs for Americans with big prescription bills.
The Affordable Access to Prescription Medications Act of 2009 would cap monthly out-of-pocket costs for medications at $200, including drugs under Medicare Part D as well as those in the private insurance market. Here are some additional details of the bill:
A growing number of insurers are moving vital medications onto specialty tiers, effectively pricing those treatments out of reach for many … While the patient typically pays an increasing but fixed amount for medications on the first three tiers of a formulary, the fourth tier, or specialty tier, imposes a co-insurance or percentage (20-35 percent or more) of the drug cost…
The Affordable Access to Prescription Medications Act would help control this cost-sharing system and create a monthly $200 per medication cap on all out-of-pocket prescription drug costs, and a monthly $500 per person cap for those taking more than one medication. Many health care reform proposals seek to cap yearly out-of-pocket drug costs, but this legislation takes it one step further by capping monthly out-of-pocket drugs costs.
I can tell you from my own family’s experience, we have had to deal with major illnesses like cancer, where in many cases the drugs are very expensive and you are forced to pay a significant percentage of the cost despite being insured. We have had months where we have had to pay $2,000 or more just on the copays of our prescribed drugs.
Rockefeller cites stats showing that many chronically ill people with such out-of-pocket costs are simply not filling their prescriptions:
Prescription drugs represent the highest out-of-pocket cost for patients, comprising almost 31 percent of total out-of-pocket spending. The higher the out-of-pocket cost, the fewer individuals fill their needed medications. In fact, about 20 percent of individuals with out-of-pocket spending greater than $250 a month do not fill their prescriptions and further exacerbate their already serious health conditions. Out-of-pocket expenses are only getting worse, especially as prescription drug costs increase.
Let’s hope this legislation passes. In the meantime, you can always find the lowest prices on your prescription drugs at Freebee Foreign Pharmacy.
Onglyza was approved by the FDA on Friday to compete with Januvia, the DPP-4 diabetes drug that has enjoyed a monopoly in its class since 2006. Januvia’s maker, Merck, sold $1.4 billion of the drug worldwide in 2008 alone.
All indications are that Onglyza is virtually identical in substance and effectiveness to Januvia — so you would think this might lead to lower prices for these drugs, wouldn’t you?
That’s what competition is all about, right?
Nope.
According to Reuters, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb, the makers of Onglyza, have decided to price the drug at a U.S. wholesale price of $5.72 per pill for common dosages.
That’s identical to Merck’s price for Januvia.
What a coincidence!
This is a great example of what’s wrong with our healthcare system. These drugmakers all know that the market is a mess — with copays, insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers, and pharmacies themselves all standing between you and price transparency. They know that it’s difficult for consumers to fight back and demand price-based competition.
And so they have their little “gentlemen’s agreements” to not get into price wars. So everybody gets to pay the monopoly price.
This means that in the onslaught of Onglyza advertising you can expect to see on your television beginning any day now, you won’t hear a word about price.
In fact, when’s the last time you saw a pharmaceutical commercial where the drugmaker advertised that its product was cheaper than the competition? If you said “never,” you’re probably right.
Fortunately, as of today, you can find Januvia for less than $2 per pill in the Freebee Foreign Pharmacy database. Onglyza is not yet available from our member pharmacies, but we hope to add it shortly.
We were recently asked by a Freebee Foreign Pharmacy member about the generic drug Acetasol HC, and why it is so expensive today. It used to be much cheaper.
Well, I’m afraid the story tells you all you need to know about how big drug companies operate.
Acetasol HC is a drug commonly used to treat infections of the outer ear and ear canal. Earlier this year, the generic drug maker Actavis raised the price of Acetasol HC by more than 1000 percent. The old price was approximately $20. The new price is more than $230.
According to a company spokesperson, the reason the price of Acetasol HC was raised more than 1000% was because Actavis is now the sole manufacturer of the drug. Other generic drug manufacturers stopped making it for reasons unrelated to Actavis.
Actavis now has monopoly pricing power and raised the price to match what the drug was selling for as a branded patented drug, even though the drug is off patent and still generic.
Actavis can raise the price of Acetasol HC by more than 1000% and still sell the product due to major inefficiencies in the American healthcare system.
I suppose another generic drug maker, seeing Actavis’ huge profits, could step back into the market. Until then, the company will sell the product at whatever price it chooses, knowing that we have no choice but to accept it.
We published a post last month on Avastin vs. Lucentis, two medications used to treat “wet AMD,” a form of age-related macular degeneration.
Philip Rosenfeld, MD, PhD, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Miami, explains in this video how Avastin was developed as a low-cost alternative to Lucentis:
As Dr. Rosenfeld explains, treatment of wet AMD with Avantis costs between $20 and $25 per dose, compared to $2,000 per dose for Lucentis.
In 2008, Genentech sold about $900 million in Lucentis. Fortunately, thanks to the emergence of Avastin as a low-cost alternative, more than 60 percent of retina specialists now prescribe Avastin. As a result, Dr. Rosenfeld concludes that the development of Avastin as an alternative to Lucentis saved consumers more than $1 billion in 2008 alone.
“It’s clear to me that Lucentis is too expensive,” said Dr. Rosenfeld. “The profits to date have been excessive.”
Unfortunately, for many high-priced drugs, no reasonably priced alternative exists.
A new study by the pharmaceutical research firm Decision Resources has determined that European prices for 170 top-selling prescription medications averaged 40 percent less than U.S. prices in 2008, with even greater drug discounts is some countries.
Some of the best bargains, relative to U.S. prices, were on Prozac, Ambien and Tegretol, the study reported.
Neil Grubert, director of pricing research for Decision Resources, said such price discrepancies are not only a concern to U.S. consumers, but also to insurance providers and pharmacy benefit managers:
The current economic downturn will focus increasing attention on the cost of prescription drugs, and many payers will look to compare the prices they pay with prices in other markets. The United States is widely assumed to be by far the most expensive pharmaceutical market, but pharmaceutical companies and payers need to be aware of the enormous price variations by therapeutic area and drug type from one country to another.
Decision Resources’ 2009 Chartbook of International Pharmaceutical Prices examines overall price differentials among the world’s largest pharmaceutical markets, including the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan.
Many Freebee Foreign Pharmacy members have discovered discounts greater than 40 percent — even up to 80 percent — using Freebee’s comparison shopping search engine.
The pharmaceutical industry predicted that if the drug importation proposal succeeded that we would be at risk from unsafe drugs. I think what they meant to say is that the pharmaceutical industry’s profits would be at risk.
Antipsychotic medications are more prevalent now than ever since there introduction in the 1950’s. These medications are used to reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia and give those who suffer from the illness back their lives. The only problem is that like with all drugs, antipsychotic’s can be very costly.
Unfortunately, many of those affected by Type 2 Diabetes are without prescription drug coverage and have to pay for there medication out of pocket. So, today I would like to take a look at the average cost of both the brand and generic versions of Metformin online, and compare those prices to the ones in Freebee Foreign Pharmacies database.
Ah, the corner pharmacy. It’s been there for years, it’s just a short drive down the road, and the pharmacists are always so friendly, aren’t they?
Last week, the FDA approved the new antipsychotic drug Saphris for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults. Saphris is one of a class of brand-name drugs called “atypical antipsychotics” that includes 
Proposed legislation introduced in Congress on Friday by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (left) could have a huge impact on drug costs for Americans with big prescription bills. 
Onglyza was approved by the FDA on Friday to compete with 
We were recently asked by a Freebee Foreign Pharmacy member about the generic drug Acetasol HC, and why it is so expensive today. It used to be much cheaper.
We published a post last month on 
A 
