posted May 16, 2004 01:22 PM         

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Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications?

Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.

In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America. The chart below speaks for itself. This is based on 100 pills.

BRAND STRENGTH WE PAY STORE COST MARK UP

Celebrex 100 mg $130.27 $0.60 21,712%

Claritin 10 mg $215.17 $0.71 30,306%

Keflex 250 mg $157.39 $1.88 8,372%

Lipitor 20 mg $272.37 $5.80 4,696%

Norvasc 10 mg $188.29 $0.14 134,493%

Paxil 20 mg $220.27 $7.60 2,898%

Prevacid 30 mg $44.77 $1.01 34,136%

Prilosec 20 mg $360.97 $0.52 69,417%

Prozac 20 mg $247.47 $0.11 224,973%

Tenormin 50 mg $104.47 $0.13 80,362%

Vasotec 10 mg $102.37 $0.20 51,185%

Xanax 1mg $136.79 $0.024 569,958%

Zestril 20 mg $89.89 $3.20 2,809%

Zithromax 600mg $1,482.19 $18.78 7,892%

Zocor 40mg $350.27 $8.63 4,059%

Zoloft 50mg $206.87 $1.75 11,821%

Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone I knew should know about this. Please read the following and pass it on.

It pays to shop around. This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreens on every corner..................

On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that's not a typo..... three thousand percent!

So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and
usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the
pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are "saving" $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs.

I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its
online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the
online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08. I would like to mention, that although Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.

I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and
pasting it into your own email, and send it to everyone you know with an
email address.

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Usually these emails make me raise a sceptical eyebrow, so I did some checking into it. http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/generic.asp
http://vitacorp.icthus.net/articles/prescription_drugs.shtml

I also found a few sites that list Costco pharmacies in their directory with No Membership Required beneath.

posted May 16, 2004 02:40 PM         

Pharmacies will only change their pricing polices when they lose significant market share of their pharmaceutical sales. Cosco and Sam's club among others have a far lower markup on pharmaceutical products. It really pays to shop around since drugs are exactly the same chemical composition no matter who makes them, whether it's the original name brand or a generic brand.