Land Rover - 4/22/2014 08:34 https://medium.com/a-good-cause/1bae664d9bd8 Here's an interesting article on why drugs are so overpriced. Just a small part of it here. Ten years ago, Albuterol, one of the most common asthma medications, cost one-fifth of what it does today. That’s not because the cost to produce it increased; it’s because Albuterol was re-patented and artificially re-priced at a higher cost. Whereas it used to cost $15 per inhaler, it’s now as much as $100. Rhinocort Aqua, a prescription nasal spray, costs $250 a month at a pharmacy in Oakland, California. But in Europe it costs just $7.

Those two drugs aren’t outliers. In the U.S., prescription drug customers pay several times more than almost anywhere in the world. Many of us only feel the cost indirectly—it’s our insurance companies that get gouged (though our premiums eventually reflect the price gouging)—and overpriced drugs are one of the ways the poor and uninsured get screwed. Obamacare will help those people get their medications, at least, but it’s just shifting the aforementioned gouging to a new payer.