🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:01:56 -0500, "Jeffraham Prestonian" <toucan@mailblocks.com> wrote:
>"Down Under On The Bucket Farm" <anyone@THE-DOMAIN-IN.SIG> wrote
>
>> If the hospital can pay just 1-2 cents per tablet, several times
>> per day, with many patients, and then hit the patient (or better
>> yet, his/her insurance company) with $1/tablet, then couldn't
>> that be, "a big item in hospital budgets"???
>
>The "shipping & handling" charge accounts for the
>price the payor pays. Nurses who administer the drug
>have to get paid; pharmD's who check the chart to
>insure no adverse interactions with patient's other meds
>have to get paid, etc. It only costs $0.03 to manufacture
>a CD, but one with music on it costs $16 on average.
>The cost isn't simply one of materials required.

Well, that isn't the cost of a CD, that's the *price* the
record labels have decided to charge. Note that one
of the major labels has just dropped the price to $9,
and you can bet they aren't losing money at that 
price. 

The price change doesn't affect the artists either. They 
weren't getting any royalties before, and they're still not 
getting anything. Theoretically, they're supposed to, but 
in reality few, if any, ever do, thanks to creative record
industry accounting practices. They basically make their 
money by touring.

My point here is that the price game for either drugs
or CDs is a racket. It doesn't reflect actual manufacturing
or distribution costs in any realistic way. Prices are set
according to what the market will bear.

The pricing of nonprescription drugs in hospitals is
particularly egregeous. Instead of rolling their overhead
costs into the price of those drugs, which just infuriates
the patients who are aware of the normal retail price, 
they should just include a separate line item for hospital 
overhead on the bill. They'd still get paid the same money, 
but it would be more honest, and would allow the consumer
to more clearly compare costs among hospitals.

Gary