Commentary: Wide differences in price of drugs has to end

By Tom LaBelle

For The Herald

Last May, my oncologist put me on a medicine know as Zytiga. It’s been quite effective. My cancer is no longer detectable. Still have a few years left, it seems.

Now, Zytiga is not cheap. One month’s supply retails for about $9,817, a supply of 120, 250-milligram tablets. That works out to be $117,804 a year, and most people in our country don’t make anywhere close to that. That means you must be either rich or have insurance — good insurance — or you simply go home to die.

So let’s discuss insurance. I’m 76, have cancer and am on Medicare, which covers 80 percent, and is a whole lot better than the chintzy policies employers provide with their wee benefits and low caps. As for an individual family policy, it’ll be at least half the price of the Zytiga itself and you cough up a horrid co-pay. Even on Medicare, the co-pay is $560 per month (not to mention the “doughnut hole”). I gotta tell you, $560 is not all that doable for most men my age. Instead of a pizza once a week, the poor devil will be eating dog food. Or going hungry.

Now here’s the paste in the groin. Taj Distributors, over in India, offers a one-month’s supply of Zytiga for $1,580, plus shipping, and Modern Times, also from India, wants just $1,400. Furthermore, though the Zytiga bottle has Johnson & Johnson on the label, the medicine, according to Google searches, appears to be of Italian manufacture — Janseen Cilag S.P.A. (Read more here: https://tinyurl.com/JanssenZytiga.)

So that’s $9,817 in America and $1,500 in India. I find this insulting.

Medicare needs the ability to negotiate the lowest price for medicines no matter from whom and where they are obtained and how much dickering needs to be done to get them.

It’s Congress’ job to make this happen. It’s also their job to close the “doughnut hole” in Medicare.

Of course they could simply introduce a bill that starts Medicare coverage at age zero — take your first breath and you are covered by Medicare for life.

This needs to be done. It really does. And this is an election year. What better time for Democrats to introduce such a bill? To be sure those in the Republican Party will fall to the floor and chew the carpet but who cares? As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Audacity, audacity, always audacity.”

Tom LaBelle lives in Clearview.