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Friday, July 1, 2011

Is an 1800% price hike justified?

So tell me what's wrong with this picture.  There's this medicine called projesterone that is used by OB/GYNs as a medicine to make the pregnancy last longer.  It's generally used to prevent pre-term labor in moms who have a history of early pregnancies.

This medicine is given once a week to accomplish said goal.  The neat thing is no study has ever been done to prove that it works.

Now in the past the injection cost $10 dollars, and it's given after 5 months.  So that comes to about 20 injections if the pregnancy goes to term.  So at this price, it was worth the cost.

Yet this medicine has since been patented, and now the medicine costs $1,800 for each injection.

Now I like patents because it gives companies and people an incentive to take the financial risk to find new products.  Yet this price hike seems a bit steep.  What do you think.

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2 comments:

K. Scott Richey said...

That quoted price gives me premature contractions; however they are premature ventricular contractions not uterine.
I agree I believe this up charge is ridiculous.
Fortunately, our insurance covered the projesterone injections, unfortunately the insurance didn’t cover the whole hospital stay & we had to pay the OB $2000.00 out of pocket, up front for services.
This is extreme due to the fact I have a full coverage PPO, we where in network, and I work at a hospital.

Rick Frea said...

My information here is second hand from my wife who works in OB, yet I've googled it and articles have confirmed it. 1800%. What's wrong with this picture?