1
0

The corruption of the asthma industry in the US


 invite response                
2013 Oct 13, 4:23am   1,186 views  2 comments

by skinnyninja   ➕follow (0)   💰tip   ignore  

The New York Times figured out that people are being ripped off if they live with chronic asthma in the U.S.

There is so much corruption in getting people in the U.S. to pay more money to treat their asthma. Just unreal.

Did you know:

1) Advair is over $200 in the US. It is only $20 in other countries. Revenue of 8 billion/year.

2) You don't need prescriptions in other countries for abuterol rescue inhalers. These inhalers save money by keeping asthma patients out of ER and out of the hospital, so in other countries abuterol is OTC, and extremely cheap.

3) There are no generics in the US for inhalers right now. None! Even though albuterol has been around for decades. They keep changing one molecule of it (or the delivery system) to re-patent it. Ridiculous.

4) Drug companies spend 2.5 billion lobbying congress (per year) to keep medications like albuterol prescription only, rather than to let it go OTC. Ridiculous.

Does it make sense to feed money into a corrupt system like this? Lobbying dollars are being spent to keep the drug companies more profitable at the expense of cheaper and convenient medications (ultimately, people's lives). Is that not insane?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html

Luckily there are ways to circumvent at least part of this madness.....

Comments 1 - 2 of 2        Search these comments

1   PeopleUnited   2013 Oct 13, 5:53am  

Move to Mexico? Everything is OTC there.

2   mell   2013 Oct 13, 8:09am  

Even worse is that a huge amount of diagnosed asthma cases are not asthma, just to push inhalers. If you show up at a pulmonologist with symptoms atypical for asthma and your spirometry FEV test checks out even slightly suboptimal, they will automatically diagnose you with asthma and push an inhaler on you, even if it's just for "trying it out". A lot of these misdiagnosed cases are bacterial, viral or even fungal infections such as MPN or CPN, walking pneumonia etc. and almost all inhalers are based on steroids that weaken the immune system and can make things worse. If you don't have typical (hearable) wheezing and shortness of breath, you likely don't have asthma. But since this country is run by crony capitalists and lawyers, this is purely informational content and not health advice, always check with your physician of choice first ;)

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions