Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is 329%
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services unveiled a new tool that allows researchers and health policy experts (and patients too) to see just what’s going on in the real world with pharmaceutical prices and utilization.
Just in time!
I didn’t make it past the letter “c” – and was shocked to see the cost of Captopril (a blood pressure and heart medicine from the early 1980s) triple in the last year.
A quick Google search revealed references to the Captopril problem in the New England Journal last fall – which followed the increases in prices of both Captopril and Abendazole, a pill that cost $1 each in the US when I traveled to Guatemala for a medical mission trip in 2009. It costs $120 per pill now. The cost of Captopril has increased from under 2 cents a pill to 80 cents a pill – still not a huge cost - but a tremendous increase.
The underlying problem for Captopril (and Abendazole) is that there is a single manufacturer selling these generic products in the US. Competition helps keep prices down, and lack of competition makes prices soar.
We need to allow importation of single-source generic medications from other developed countries with effective drug regulation. The market is too “thin” for a second US generic company to step in and create competition. Lowering the barriers for a company that already sells the drug in the UK, Canada, Germany, or other similar countries could help us secure substantially lower unit costs without any danger to our patients.
The danger to our patients is the loss of adherence that comes from prices that are going through the roof.
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| The only manufacturer of Captopril in the US is West-Ward Pharmaceuticals, which has hiked the price by a factor of more than 3 in the last year. |
