Anti-hookworm drug that costs 4 cents in Tanzania costs up to $400 in the United States

[Willie Pep]

Two pills to wipe out hookworm could cost you 4 cents. Or $400.

It just depends where you live.

The 4 cents is in Tanzania. That'll cover the two pills it takes to knock out the intestinal parasite. But in the United States, where hookworm has re-emerged, the price for two 200 mg tablets of albendazole can cost as much as $400.

The pill will put an end to the problems hookworm can cause, such as anemia and protein deficiency as well as stunting growth in children.

It's not just a problem with the anti-hookworm pill. Drugs for diseases of the developing world, in particular what are known as "neglected tropical diseases" like hookworm and leishmaniasis, are enormously more expensive in the United States than in the developing world.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/11/567753423/why-a-pill-thats-4-cents-in-tanzania-costs-up-to-400-in-the-u-s

[HopeAgain]

1. American capitalism in all its glory...

[Igel]

3. Yup.

You charge what the market can bear.

A passing glance at the article suggests (to me, at least) that we are looking at the same effect we see in higher ed tuition. Whenever there's an increase in cheap money for students in the form of loans or grants, tuition and fees increase.

As soon as Medicaid expanded, a lot of drug companies hiked their prices. If you have insurance, it's not so bad. Same if you have Medicaid. If the market consisted entirely of people who needed to pay for it themselves, I'm guessing the price would go down because sales would decrease. Hookworm, esp., tends to be a poor person's affliction.

What I think is fairly amazing is that unlike the epinephrine auto-injector price 'scandal' from a year or two ago, there are still no alternative manufacturers of some of these generic drugs.

I routinely use a generic drug. It's price went down slightly this year. It's one that's in fairly high demand, but at the same time there are a lot of manufacturers. Spending $150 for a year's supply is still giving the manufacturer a decent profit margin, but it's easily manageable.

Looking at manufacturing costs, of course, is always a lazy way of evaluating what something's price should be. It says that apart from obtaining raw materials and the money needed to pay people to move those raw materials around or monitor some machine doing the manufacturing, the equipment, building, quality control and testing, packaging, sales force, transportation system, management, investors, truckers, store sales staff and overhead, taxes, benefits and legal costs should all be funded at $0, and no additional money should be made off it to, say, replace depreciated equipment or look towards new products.

[JDC]

2. Aaaah, capitalism.