What will you do? Pay for drugs or just let go?
This should never happen in a country that claims to be the best in the world. But it is happening, especially to people on Medicare, people with cancer, people with little time left.

They face buying hope in the form of medication or betting their ailments will somehow allow them more time on Earth. If you doubt the truth of this example, ask anyone with cancer how they afford the drugs they must take.

I recently read the anguished words of a woman trying to decide whether to end her retirement so she can work and pay every dime she earns for her husband's medication - or skip the drug and stay home for what may be the last of his days. They're on Medicare and have insurance - but the drug he needs is wildly expensive and it's not covered by either Medicare or the insurance company.

His previous drug regimen wrecked his kidney. The new prescription may not be any better. But it could do him some good -  if he can come up with $48,720 a year for a drug made by Pfizer.

Many of the newer cancer drugs cost upwards of $100,000 per year.
Even the starting cost for the relatively low-priced carcinoid maintenance drug, octreotide acetate, exceeds $2,000 per year for people with insurance. A reclassification effort may place octreotide out of reach for most Medicare patients if the plan goes through this year.

The U.S. pays more for prescription drugs than any developed country in the world.
And Big Pharma reaps high profits. Consider these figures from Reuters News Service: Pfizer, one the country's largest pharmaceutical companies netted $3.74 billion in the third quarter of 2011. Johnson and Johnson, makers of everything from Tylenol to anti-psychotic injectables, raked in $3.48 billion in the first quarter. By the end of the year, they'd made $4.53 billion. Novartis, maker of Sandostatin, the brand name of octreotide, netted $2.49 billion in the third quarter.

Why do drugs cost so much? 
Developing them costs, sure. The FDA puts every new drug through rigorous testing. And the FDA shares in the profits each company makes. In fact, the marketability of a drug is one of the FDA's concerns when it approves a drug. Seem like a conflict of interest to you, too?

But the bulk of Big Pharma's budget goes to promotion.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, only 17% of the average drugmaker's budget is spent on development. An obscene amount goes into lobbying. From 1998 to 2006, pharmaceuticals spent $855 million to convince elected officials they need no price controls. There's legislation floating around Washington now to require pharmaceuticals to cut lobbying budgets and help out folks who can't afford their products. Any bets on how that's going to go down?

Where the money goes
The next time you see one of those sunny commercials on TV telling you to "ask your doctor about" some drug or other; when you flip through a magazine and see those full-page ads for certain medications; when you see those stylishly dressed drug reps wheeling their cases of drugs in to your doctors' offices - that's where the money is going.

None of these people look like they are sick at all. They don't even look like they've ever known anybody who is sick. I wonder what they will do when the time comes for them to choose - sacrifice all for a drug that MIGHT work - or just let go.




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