Turing Pharmaceuticals Did Us One Big Favor

Dear Turing Pharmaceuticals, Thank you. Thank you for exposing what I have known for years, that health care in the United States is commoditized instead of treated like a human right. By showing the severity of your greed in raising the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill, you captured the ire of the public. However, you've done one good thing for the American public through this incredibly greedy move: You put price gouging of specialty drugs on a national stage. I've known about this for years because I've been exposed to price gouging in the medical world since I was 16. While most kids were worrying about school and social lives, I was worrying about going to my next Remicade infusion or hospital visit. Remicade costs hundreds to thousands of dollars per vial and is administered intravenously. This resulted in bills that, combined with outpatient treatment fees including bloodwork and saline, were $23,000 per treatment, but I had the privilege of insurance, so most of those costs were paid. It makes me sick to say that my medical coverage is a "privilege" in any way. Everybody should have the right to manage their health, and it is imperative that this right includes the medications that work for their individual conditions. Price gouging by pharmaceutical companies destroys this right by prioritizing the greed of the companies who commoditize our health over the needs of patients. Let's take another example: One of my main issues with Remicade was that ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news