5 ms·

Do you really believe that it costs upwards of 4000 dollars to track a little box with medication in it? For that money I hope each box comes with a solar recha

Do you really believe that it costs upwards of 4000 dollars to track a little box with medication in it? For that money I hope each box comes with a solar rechargeable smartphone that sends a gps beacon every half hour.

GhostVII 9y ago
It's not the tracking, it's the super long and expensive regulatory process, and the cost of researching the drugs. Remember that for every successful drug, there are probably many that the company spent lots of money working on, and didn't end up working out. Someone has to pay for those failed ones as well.
- anon946 9y ago
  How does that explain that the autoinjector was $690 in 2014 but $4500 today?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mejin 9y ago
    I don't know about the autoinjector, but for a lot of medication the list price is there simply so that when the insurance company negotiates a lower price, the manufacturer will get a reasonable amount. in many cases expensive drugs can even be free if your income is low enough.
    - refurb 9y ago
      This is a good point as well. List price doesn't mean the price that people end up paying. Some of these products are discounted 80-90%.
VLM 9y ago
To actually put some numbers to the argument, literal aircraft grade bolts from spruce and specialties or spencer are super handwavy about twice the retail cost of similar low/single quantity bolts sold at home depot. I've done a couple ham radio antenna projects where I don't wanna climb up there again anytime soon nor do I want to clean up a failure and literal aircraft grade fasteners are surprisingly cheap and available and extremely reliable. Good enough for a 747, good enough to hold up my ham radio antenna. With modern technology, trace ability and all that is really not that expensive for commodities. Returning to the topic, it would be predictable if OPs re-invention of the concept of generic drugs were maybe 1/10th the price of name brand. Oddly enough that's not unusual for generic pharma to be shockingly cheaper than name brand. The real question is why aren't generic overdose drugs incredibly cheap? I would guess profiteering, but who knows. Maybe they're not shelf stable, perhaps extremely temp or UV sensitive?

GhostVII 9y ago

It's not the tracking, it's the super long and expensive regulatory process, and the cost of researching the drugs. Remember that for every successful drug, there are probably many that the company spent lots of money working on, and didn't end up working out. Someone has to pay for those failed ones as well.

anon946 9y ago
How does that explain that the autoinjector was $690 in 2014 but $4500 today?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mejin 9y ago
  I don't know about the autoinjector, but for a lot of medication the list price is there simply so that when the insurance company negotiates a lower price, the manufacturer will get a reasonable amount. in many cases expensive drugs can even be free if your income is low enough.
  - refurb 9y ago
    This is a good point as well. List price doesn't mean the price that people end up paying. Some of these products are discounted 80-90%.

VLM 9y ago

To actually put some numbers to the argument, literal aircraft grade bolts from spruce and specialties or spencer are super handwavy about twice the retail cost of similar low/single quantity bolts sold at home depot. I've done a couple ham radio antenna projects where I don't wanna climb up there again anytime soon nor do I want to clean up a failure and literal aircraft grade fasteners are surprisingly cheap and available and extremely reliable. Good enough for a 747, good enough to hold up my ham radio antenna. With modern technology, trace ability and all that is really not that expensive for commodities. Returning to the topic, it would be predictable if OPs re-invention of the concept of generic drugs were maybe 1/10th the price of name brand. Oddly enough that's not unusual for generic pharma to be shockingly cheaper than name brand. The real question is why aren't generic overdose drugs incredibly cheap? I would guess profiteering, but who knows. Maybe they're not shelf stable, perhaps extremely temp or UV sensitive?