GapPharmacy
Submitted by gregflynn on Fri, 08/11/2006 - 12:25pm
I have always been intrigued by the seemingly random nature of drug pricing and was inspired by a recent NPR story about Genentech to find a way to fill the Medicare Part D donut hole. It seems Genentech has a conundrum. It recently won approval for Lucentis, a drug to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which costs $1,950 per treatment. At the same time eye doctors have been treating AMD in patients with small off-label doses of Avastin, another Genentech drug approved to treat colon cancer. The cost for the amount of Avastin used for AMD is $50 per treatment.
So here's my proposal to fill in the hole. We set up a non-profit membership pharmacy called GapDrugs with our own charge card. We sell a $50 prescription for $2,850 so people can get across the gap as fast as possible. We rebate $2,800 and credit it to the card which can be used to purchase non-prescription essentials, food for example, and require payment only as the purchases are made. Problem solved.
Crossposted at DailyKos
Trackback URL for this post:
http://bluenc.com/trackback/3308
- gregflynn's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Great idea
And maybe you can get a free pair of jeans with every new enrollment!
imagine the humiliation...
...of going to school for all those years training to become a pharmacist only to be stuck folding shirts, trying to sell matching socks and telling all of your customers that sure! those jeans that are three sizes to large will fit! you can belt it! you can cinch it!
or...
...a free pair of genes.
Greg, I heard that story too
What struck me was when they released the drug Lucentis, that they looked around to determine the "fair market" price....
I was blown away that they don't base it on anything more than "what's the highest price we can get away with...."
pricing is bs
they say it is to support research, but big pharms spends twice as much on overhead (advertising esp.) as they do on R&D.