#prescription drugs

[reasonsforhope]

Sorry I'm kind of dissociated and my vocab crashes during that can you explain the Biden drug thing in just. Shorter simple sentences.

Sure! You're not the only one who's mentioned being unclear on what it means either, and I'm happy to help

(Context for anyone else: US Sets Policy to Seize Patents of Government-Funded Drugs if Price Deemed Too High, via Good News Network, December 11, 2023)

From the very basics:

When drug companies create new drugs, they get a legal protection called a "patent." The patent means no one else can make or sell the same drug for whatever number of years.

Usually, this is about 10 years after the drug starts being sold to the public.

So, for those years, that one drug company is the only source of whatever medication. And since people need their medication, drug companies can charge however much money they want.

Meaning a lot of drugs that people need to live cost way too much money to buy.

So, with this, Biden told drug companies "Fuck you, if you keep making medicine too $$$ for people to afford, I'm giving your competition the right to make and sell those drugs too."

The US has never done anything like this before.

This is a huge threat to the whole (awful) drug industry in the US. It will save people thousands of dollars. If he does this, it will save lives.

--

Edit 12/17/23: Quick note, as people have said in the notes, this only applies to drugs made in part using taxpayer money. Which is! Literally all of them!

[lookingforcactus]

A big cost and concern for many seniors in the U.S. is the price of prescription drugs and other healthcare expenses—and this year, thanks to The Inflation Reduction Act, their costs may go down dramatically, especially for patients fighting cancer or heart disease.

I learned about the new benefits because my ‘Medicare birthday’ is coming up in a couple months when I turn 65. I was shocked that there were so many positive changes being made, which I never heard about on the news.

Thousands of Americans on Medicare have been paying more than $14,000 a year for blood cancer drugs, more than $10,000 a year for ovarian cancer drugs, and more than $9,000 a year for breast cancer drugs, for instance.

That all changed beginning in 2023, after the Biden administration capped out-of-pocket prescriptions at $3,500—no matter what drugs were needed. And this year, in 2024, the cap for all Medicare out-of-pocket prescriptions went down to a maximum of $2,000.

“The American people won, and Big Pharma lost,” said President Biden in September 2022, after the legislation passed. “It’s going to be a godsend to many families.”

Another crucial medical necessity, the shingles vaccine, which many seniors skip because of the cost, is now free. Shingles is a painful rash with blisters, that can be followed by chronic pain, and other complications, for which there is no cure

In 2022, more than 2 million seniors paid between $100 and $200 for that vaccine, but starting last year, Medicare prescription drug plans dropped the cost for shots down to zero.

Another victory for consumers over Big Pharma affects anyone of any age who struggles with diabetes. The cost of life-saving insulin was capped at $35 a month [for people on Medicare].

Medicare is also lowering the costs of the premium for Part B—which covers outpatient visits to your doctors. 15 million Americans will save an average of $800 per year on health insurance costs, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Last year, for the first time in history, Medicare began using the leverage power of its large patient pool to negotiate fair prices for drugs. Medicare is no longer accepting whatever drug prices that pharmaceutical companies demand.

Negotiations began on ten of the most widely used and expensive drugs.

Among the ten drugs selected for Medicare drug price negotiation were Eliquis, used by 3.7 million Americans and Jardiance and Xarelto, each used by over a million people. The ten drugs account for the highest total spending in Medicare Part D prescription plans...

How are all these cost-savings being paid for?

The government is able to pay for these benefits by making sure the biggest corporations in America are paying their fair share of federal taxes.

In 2020, for instance, dozens of American companies on the Fortune 500 list who made $40 billion in profit paid zero in federal taxes.

Starting in 2023, U.S. corporations are required to pay a minimum corporate tax of 15 percent. The Inflation Reduction Act created the CAMT, which imposed the 15% minimum tax on the adjusted financial statement income of any corporation with average income that exceeds $1 billion.

For years, Americans have decried the rising costs of health care—but in the last three years, there are plenty of positive developments.

-via Good News Network, February 25, 2024

[aunti-christ-ine]

I remember so clearly how we NEVER saw television commercials for prescription medicine. Unheard of!

Then, in the late 1980's, direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising became completely legal — but in only New Zealand and the United States — nowhere else on Earth.

Now Big Pharma spends more on marketing than they do on research, mainly because most of the basic research has already been funded by federal grants — i.e., taxpayers (you and me).

So next time you see a prescription drug commercial on TV, remember that YOU are paying (through our taxes) for the ad's creation and airing.

Then, on top of that, we are personally shelling out ridiculous bankruptcy-causing dollars for the medicine itself — many, many times the cost of the actual drugs — to pay for their commercials.

Thanks to Bush, Reagan, and Republicans! 🤬

( sickening. )

[politijohn]

Source

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[redacted09x]

i’ll be the dager beneath your pillow

[deepdreamnights]

Prescription Medications as Pokemon via NijiJourney

I found a list of the 15 most advertised (in the US, obviously) prescription drugs of 2015 and turned them into pokemon via NiniJourney (the Midjourney anime/manga specific model) v6, and the following base prompt:

full color illustration of the pokemon (drug name here) , official art, bulbapedia, fullbody, white background, gen 6

Most were iterated multiple times, a few were given minor edits to erase extraneous nonsense parts or touch up the color saturation/tone. Tried to keep the plant-types and the "basically a lady" types to a few examples each, something the robot resisted.

Nothing to get anywhere near what I'd consider the minimal expression threshold, so public domain all around.

May post promising spares as a separate post. Might not, dunno.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Something that people tend to forget is that the plot of Fight Club kicks off because the main character's doctor refused to take his problems seriously and prescribe medication. "You're just drug seeking, you're fine. You think you have problems, you little crybaby? If you wanna know what real suffering looks like go to a support group and look at all the pathetic dying people. Now get out of my office, that'll be $10,000"

[thatsmoneyduddeee]

I do be one pretty bitch huh🥰

[lifewithchronicpain]

All drugs are natural.

Similarly, all supplements are drugs.

Meaning the aversion to drugs as if they're unnatural treatments and favoring supplements as natural and better treatments is complete and utter bullshit.

All drugs derive from a natural source that is purified and altered to work better. Supplements are unregulated versions of this that can interact with other medications and medical procedures just like drugs. If you think "natural" is better, you're just an elitist that is ignorant of how medicine works.

[reasonsforhope]

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

[americanhell]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is allowing Florida to import what could amount to millions of dollars worth of prescription drugs from Canada — but the federal government says there are safeguards in place to prevent shortages north of the border. Florida has estimated that purchasing prescription drugs from Canadian wholesalers to treat such conditions as HIV/AIDS, diabetes and hepatitis C could save the southern state $150 million US annually.  Marking a shift in U.S pharmaceutical policy, the FDA approved Florida's request. In a letter to the state government dated Friday, the director of the administration signed off on the proposal and said that importing medications from Canada could "significantly reduce the cost of covered products to the American consumer without posing additional risk to the public's health and safety."

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[politijohn]

Source

[bekahivy]

Noah Kahan-No Complaints

[kiragecko]

Current issues:

2nd sleeping pill also didn't work. Doctor is bad at this kind of medical care. Want to go back and get new prescription so I start sleeping, but I struggle to believe it will help

think my IUD has hit end-of-life. My IUD was keeping my uterine lining from eating my uterus. I now have constant cramps and nausea. But that ALSO requires a doctor's appointment!

Wonderful things:

after 1 adjustment, my vyvanse has never given me any problems, and it helps a lot. Nice stable medication

not drinking tea after noon DOES help my sleep, even if it's annoying

My husband is starting week 2 of his new job, after a year off work! It's going really well, and I'm enjoying actual time alone ;)

we found out some of why my brilliant eldest is struggling so much at school! He's in the 97ᵗʰ percentile for general intelligence, but the 4ᵗʰ percentile for ability to work with sentences. He's both bored AND unable to do what's being asked of him. So now the school has a bunch of ideas for how to keep him engaged without asking him to write letters on paper. (Psychologist didn't say what kind of learning disability he has, but did say he had one.)

I've been working on my Mochica dictionary again, and having a lot of fun

cleaning is easier now that I'm not doing as much emotional support for my husband

having money again will help with things like new medications

fanfic. Fanfic is wonderful