In the News – Prescription Drugs Cost More in the US Than in Other Parts of the World

Snippet from the article:

Whether you are young or old, man or woman, very healthy or quite sick, it is almost a certainty that you are going to use a prescription drug in the next year or two. These medicines are crucial for preventing diseases and treating all sorts of ailments and problems.

They are also expensive — really expensive. For example, the best-selling drug of all time, Pfizer’s cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor, went for $3.50 per pill and up before going generic in late 2011. But these days some retail chains are giving away generic Lipitor while the rest are charging barely 50 cents a pill.

Prescription drugs cost Americans far more than they do people living in many other parts of the world. The drug companies say it is because they have to pay back the R&D costs which is largely put on Americans. Many think that this is because drug companies spend a fortune on direct-to-consumer sales and marketing (which they don’t do in other countries) and because other nations negotiate better deals for drugs than private insurers do in the United States.

Read the rest at CNN — How Big Pharma rips you off on drugs