Here's another example of price gouging by the US pharmaceutical business.
It's time for me to get a colonoscopy. I'm all for screening for colon cancer. The major reduction in deaths since the mid 1990s in the USA due to colon cancer has been entirely due to better screening – colonoscopy. The treatments work only if the disease hasn't spread outside of the colon. Once the disease metastasizes, patients rarely survive longer than 3 or 4 years. The earlier stages of colon cancer often go undetected without colonoscopy. The trouble is, in the USA, only about 50% of the eligible population actually gets scoped out. The other half would rather live in denial.
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, it's really not so bad. It's the prep you have to do the day before that is no fun. About 20 years ago, an inexpensive over-the-counter product, called Fleet's Phospho-Soda, was used. Two doses really cleaned you out. The only problem was that it delivered a heavy dose of sodium to the taker. In some older people with heart conditions, that much sodium could lead to life threatening problems.
So, gastrointestinal (GI) docs stopped prescribing that, and substituted large quantities of another inexpensive over-the-counter product called MiraLax. It didn't have the whopping amount of sodium, but you had to drink large amounts (2 or 4 liters, if I recall) of concentrated MiraLax. It wasn't really nasty, but drinking that much was difficult. And the GI docs claimed the MiraLax prep did a only so-so job of cleaning you out.
Bring on Big Pharma American style marketing. For my next colonoscopy, I was prescribed a new product called Suprep. I was told it works as well as the old Fleet's Phospho-soda without the high sodium risk, and without the feeling of being up-to-your-eyeballs with MiraLax.
The first problem – it's by prescription only. Then I found out today its expensive – $105 for two doses!! I looked up what's in it: sodium sulfate, potassium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate. These are all dirt cheap inorganic salt compounds. The only real difference is that there less sodium overall, and a more physiologically correct balance of sodium and potassium. I doubt if any Research and/or Development was involved with this product.
So the marketing practices of Big Pharma took inexpensive over-the-counter products, and substituted an over-priced prescription-only product. Some might call that smart. I call it arrogant & greedy.
