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Got this message from a friend, a little something to think about.

The Real Costs of Prescription Drugs

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications?

Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet.

A search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA has asserted the following:

Brand Name of Drug
Consumer Price 100 Tabs
Cost of ACTIVE Ingredients
Markup by %

Celebrex 100 mg
Consumer Price: $130.27
Active Ing. $ .60
Mark up: 21,712%

Claritin 10 mg
CP: $215.17
Active Ingred. .71
Mark up : 30,306%

Keflex 250 mg
Consumer pays: $157.39
Active Ingred: $1.88
Mark Up: 8,372%

Lipitor 20 mg
Consumer pays: $272.37
Active Ingred. 5.80
Mark up: 4,696%

Norvasc 10 mg
Consumer pays: $188.29
Active Ingred. .14
Mark up: 134,493%

Paxil 20 mg
Consumer Pays: $220.27
Active Ingred. 7.60
Mark Up 2,898%

Prevacid 30 mg
Consumer Pays: $44.77
Active Ingred. 1.01
Mark Up 34,136%

Prozac 20mg
Consumer Pays $247.47
Active Ingred. .11
Mark Up 224,973%

Tenormin 50 mg
Consumer Pays: $104.47
Active Ingred. $.13
Mark Up 80,362%

Vasotec 10 mg
Consumer Pays $102.37
Active Ingred. .20
Mark Up 51,185%

Xanax 1 mg
Consumer pays: $136.79
Active Ingred. $.024
Mark Up 569,958%

Zestril 20 mg
Consumer Pays: $89.89
Active Ingred. $3.20
Mark Up 2,809%

Zithromax 600mg
Consumer Pays: $1,482.19
Active Ingredient $18.78
Mark Up 7,892%

Zocor 40mg
Consumer pays $350.27
Active Ingred. $8.63
Mark Up 4,059%

Zoloft 50 mg
Consumer pays: $206.87
Active Ingred. $1.75
Mark up 11,821%


An investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. (Steve Wilson)
He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more.

Pharmacies are often the culprits.
If you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand,
you might pay $100 for 100 pills.
The pharmacist may tell you that if you get the generic equivalent,
they would cost only $80, making you think you are saving $20.
What the pharmacist is NOT telling you is that those 100 generic pills
may have only cost him $10.

The reporter was asked whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged very little over their cost for generic drugs.

On the Costco website, where you can look up any drug and get its online price, it says that the in store prices are consistent with the online prices.

For example:
The drug Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients.

At Costco, 100 pills cost $19.89.

Although Costco is a "Membership" type store, you do NOT have to
be a member to buy prescriptions there, as medication is a federally regulated substance.

You tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in, the reporter has stated.


USA Today has stated that many of the active ingredients used by U.S.
drug companies are purchased from Canadian companies, which makes attempts to label Canadian prescription medicines as "unsafe"
seem pretty ridiculous.

Just more fleecing of the American people.

Sorry for the length.

One thing to keep in mind... You're not paying for the ingredients in the pills. You're paying for the billions of R&D that's put into finding these ingredients. Some companies will spend billions on R&D in a single year. In 2000, Pfizer spent 4.4 billion, while GlaxoSmithKline spent 3.6 billion. This, along with marketing costs, are why generics can cost so much less than brand-name drugs.

Your numbers need to be adjusted to account for R&D costs by the companies which produce those drugs.

yep, a drug has to pass several phases of test (animal/human
experiments), often for years and the company has to pay for that.

Here at the Univ. I study at you can volunteer for drug testing.
One of the guys here did this for cash, its quite weird.

The 'mild' version is when an existing/sold drug is tested on
people of specific age/race/diet whatever. You get $100-150 per
week, and for this:
you can eat ONLY what they give you, you have to go for
checkup 1x or 2x every day, and these checkups are pretty
thorough. the funniest part is that you have to carry a jug
with you all day, collect ALL your urine and submit it daily.

The 'tough' version is the same, just they test drugs not
tested on humans before. He said you can make $1500/week if
you go for 'brain' stuff, like antidepressants and such.
With a slight chance that your brain/nervous system gets messed up ...
There are not too many people volunteering for this.
This guy did #1 whenever he was out of cash, after all they provide
all the food too

T.

one of the drugs we are using here (hospital) is $1400 a bottle and we give it through nebulization(a breathing tx). we have 2 running tonight and both patients have to take 5 days worth. each tx runs for 16-18 hours and the pt has to breathe it the whole time. 1400 x 5=$7000! we also once had to get some king cobra snake venom(the pt was bit by the snake) and it was $5000 a vial(no shitttt). they had to fly 4 vials here. $20000 worth of drugs you could hold in one hand!

If you knew how they came up with anti-venom, you would understand the price. People build up an immunity to the venom by subjecting themselves to it in extremely diluted doses. They build up the immunity (has to do with the T and B white blood cells, and the formation of memory cells). They then give blood, which contains the white blood cells that destroy the venom. Remember that there are 3 types of blood, A, B, and O (an AB person can take any blood type), and then you need to find out if the indiidual is positive or neg (ex O+ or AB-). So seeing that these people put themselves in deaths hands just to make these anti-venoms, I can understand the cost.

As a sidebar, Ford recently reported that $700 of the price of each new Ford is for health care for their employees.

Don't forget liability insurance from the litigation happy Trial Attorneys in this country. I can only imagine this fee would be upwards of $500 million each year.

Granted, R&D $ are high, but how much money do the executives of a given drug company make? I'd have to research this, but if they are like other companies, its probably in the tens of millions of dollars, not including bonuses and expense accounts.
As an example of corporate mega-greed, the CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina (spelling?) made a $100 million BONUS a few years ago! Did she really deserve that? She also said recently that there is no entitlement to jobs here in the USA in reference to allowing the exporting jobs to cheaper countries (i.e., India, Russia, etc.) Maybe her job should be exported also!
Also, you must consider that advertising and marketing costs make up a substantial percentage of consumer products. For many products, these costs are actually higher that what's in the box! Pepsi, in response to these high costs have dumped celebrity endorsements to save advertising costs (Hoorah! ) and hold the line on prices.
The national Academy of Sciences said last week that about 18,000 people die here each year because of no health insurance. What a pity.
Where is Jesus when we need him?