Health Care: WTF is this?

Posted on January 29th, 2008 in Personal Life by Justin

The wife-to-be picked up a skin infection a few weeks ago that I have experience with. Ring worm. I spent years wrestling and got it myself once. I’ve seen it 50 or 60 times at least.

It’s a fungal infection, not an actual worm. The people most likely to get it, in my experience, are cat owners and we’ve got four of them. Cat’s carry the stupid fungus in their fecal matter and all it takes is for them to plop their butt on your neck while you sleep or for them to lick their own arse and then lick your neck to pass it on.

Anyway, I’ve got some experience with it. You can usually cure it with athlete’s foot cream. Unfortunately that didn’t work this go around. I’m just thankful she trusted me enough to treat it myself.

So, she went to the doc to get a prescription to finally kill the damned thing. Doc ID’ed it properly, checked her insurance, wrote a prescription and she went off to have it filled.

The pharmacy wanted $142 to fill it. Insurance only covered $18. She called bullshit on the matter, refused to pay for it, called me, and went home to research it.

Turns out the pill she was prescribed is only 5 years old. Patents are granted for 17 years. Anybody care to guess why this shit costs so much?

So, she gets on the web and looks up the Mayo clinic’s list of stuff that’s acceptable for ring worm. There’s a shit load of generic stuff out there. Duh. Ring worm isn’t exactly a new thing.

She calls the doc’s office and they tell her that the ’script she’s got is the only thing that will cure it. She calls bullshit on that one, pointing out that ring worm has been curable for years. They play dumb.

Somehow she managed to get a new ’script. This time insurance pays $48 of the cost and the total cost to her is a grand whopping $10.

A $58 cure vs. a $160 dollar cure. On top of that the cheap stuff is one pill a day for 14 days. The expensive stuff is 3 pills a day for 30 days.

WTF?

Now, why in the world would a doctor insist on a ’script for a common ailment that was under patent control, three times more expensive, required more frequent medication, and a longer medication period?

We have two choices:

1) The doctor is a moron that was never educated in pre-2002 solutions to ring worm.

or:

2) They’re getting kickbacks from the drug makers for prescribing new stuff.

I’m going to go with #2.