this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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PSA from someone who works in the industry. Drug manufacturers offer “patient assistance programs” where people who are under insured or uninsured can receive treatments at a discount or sometimes free. They are not broadly advertised and I had no idea they existed until I started working in the space. Just search the drug + patient assistance or financial assistance.
Also to state the obvious... The US healthcare system is fucked — mostly insurance companies but also pharmaceutical companies and hospital systems in the US are all doing everything they can to increase their profits at your expense.
Genuine question..... What defines "under insured" here?
I've heard bits about this before, but I always assumed it meant it was for if you're totally uninsured or on some shitty basic coverage insurance. I've always had extremely expensive "best care you can get" type packages, but always end up getting shit declined anyway because the insurance claims shit "that medication isn't on our list of meds for the diagnosis/disease you have". After rounds and rounds of contacting the doctors office and having them the insurance company about how it IS actually a drug for that diagnosis, the last thing I have the patience for is more phone calls that seem hopeless.
Obviously the insurance company actually dictates your healthcare and the prescriptions you receive, not your doctor. If you have great insurance, more physicians and treatments will be covered. Under insured is just having insurance that doesn’t cover your treatment.
Anytime a drug comes to market, manufacturers need to make sure drugs are covered by insurers. So, pharma companies go out to the “payers” (it’s what’s we call them at work) and vie to get a good position on the payer’s “formulary” (the list of drugs covered by insurance).
In this negotiation, you have things like “prior authorization” where the prescriber needs to make a case to the insurance company before a drug can be prescribed. There’s also different tiers for a class of drugs. This means the payers allow certain drugs to be covered only after a patient steps through other (cheaper) treatments. If it’s not covered, you can pay out of pocket but none of this shit is priced for an individual.
There’s a cold calculus on both sides where the pharma company has sunk $300 million to $5 billion dollars to bring a drug to market that can sometimes take a decade to go through clinical trials and receive FDA approval — they need to charge a lot to recoup their investment and hopefully become profitable. Meanwhile, insurers have a population they need to cover and a set pool of money and they don’t need a new $50,000 therapy when there’s a generic that will treat 80% of patients. The other 20% can jump through the hoops or get stuffed…