May 29, 2005

• The Price of Drugs

  
  

  I’m talking about prescription drugs, not the illegal kind.  Today I stood next to my friend as he wrote a check for $1,664.00, and change, for 28 tablets of an antibiotic that his son is going to have to take twice a day for the next 2 weeks.  He’ll probably get an 80% reimbursement from his insurance company, but that will still be about $23 a day out of pocket.  Without insurance, he would be paying $120 a day for the medicine.

  
  

  The man gets free insurance for himself through his employer, but he has to pay dearly every month for his son.  I estimate the combined incomes of father and mother at around $120,000 a year, but she’s eaten up with cancer.  They’re divorced, so they have to maintain 2 households, 3 cars, and they’re still paying off debt from the mother’s first 2 bouts with cancer, never mind her current cancer treatments and the boy’s 4 weeks in the hospital.

  
  

  So far these people have been able to avoid bankruptcy, but if ever there was a classic bankruptcy case in a middle class family, it’s them.  When Congress passed the new bankruptcy law a few weeks ago, which I opposed and still oppose, these were the people I thought about.  How they’re going to make it, and put that kid (with his 4.0 high school GPA) through college, is anybody’s guess.  Sure, he’ll get a state-sponsored academic scholarship to a Florida college, and he’s an outstanding athlete (or was, before all this), so he might even get some help there.  But still.

  
  

  When he heard the cost of the prescription, J said, in disbelief, “That’s a quarter of what my car cost.”  And he was right.  Everybody was appalled by that price tag.

  
  

  Bush wants to “reform” Social Security in order to fatten the coffers of the Wall Street gang, but what is he doing about health care?  Nothing.  And Medicaid?  All either one of the Bush Boys wants to do with that is cut it to the bone.  I just wonder what that prescription would cost in Canada.

  
  

  ED

  • 12:33 am
  • 1 Comment