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Pescodar189 t1_je7nf4q wrote

Reply to comment by police-ical in eli5: How does GoodRX (or any prescription savings group) work? by fourtwenny2389

Great explanation, but I wanted to add to:

>which can mostly be made very cheaply

Making established medicines is indeed very cheap in general compared to their costs, but researching new medicines and getting them approved is wildly expensive, speculative, and on long timelines. If one truly wants to hold drug companies accountable to the cost of manufacturing a medicine they need some way to separate the costs and benefits of research from the manufacturing.

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police-ical t1_je7qv0e wrote

This is accurate, and gets into the somewhat more straightforward question of why branded drugs are expensive. Those seemingly ridiculous prices do indeed reflect a lot of very costly R&D, including for the host of medications that failed Phase II and III trials.

Generic medications, on the other hand, really should be expected to correlate somewhat with wholesale prices once there's competition. This does hold true for the (much healthier and more functional) over-the-counter drug market.

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Guvante t1_je8eeoh wrote

Certainly they can't charge $5 at the pharmacy for something that costs $5 to manufacturer.

But we can agree that charging $500 is a little suspect.

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tripdad333 t1_je9fbr9 wrote

The second pill only costs a dollar to make, the first one cost 1 billion...

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