This always baffles me.
There’s so much rampant profiteering in the US healthcare system it’s unbelievable. Other countries look at it from afar in utter disbelief. I’m glad I had no serious health problems when I lived there 25 years ago (and I had health insurance via my employer).
In the UK prescriptions are effectively capped at about USD125 per year:
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/help-nhs-prescription-costs/nhs-pr...
I recently collected 4 prescriptions from my local pharmacy (3 for temporary conditions, the other one was ADHD meds which I’ll be on for the foreseeable future) and the pharmacy didn’t even want to see proof of my prepayment certificate, I just said I had one and they ticked the relevant box and handed me the prescriptions.
(The implication is that the NHS will check this and come after me if I was lying.)
Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots wrong with the UK healthcare system but the access to regular medication has very few barriers.
In Scotland and, I think, Wales there are no subscription charges at all.
Ah yes, forgot about that.
The regional differences are quite odd.
I got my ADHD diagnosis via Right-To-Choose, so it is considered an NHS diagnosis and I get my medication via the NHS (and therefore cheap). But the RTC pathway isn't available in Wales/Scotland/NI. I'd either have to wait years for an NHS diagnosis or go private and then have to pay £££ for my prescriptions privately.
The UK system has many problems but at least the general population are shielded from the exorbitant individual costs. We pay for it through general taxation but that, at least, spreads the load a bit.
I got my ADHD diagnosis privately (mostly because of the length of the NHS waiting lists, and I'm currently waiting on a NHS RTC provider to transfer my care there) and I pay the trade price plus pharmacy markup (so ~£40/mo) for my medication, for whatever it's worth as comparison.
Definitely not cheap (I would prefer the £9.90 NHS prescription fee) but I get the feeling that it's cheaper than I would pay elsewhere in the world anyway.
Yeah, mine would have been £50/mo if I’d been private according to the receipts I never had to pay on RTC. Luckily I only had to wait about 9 months from referral to RTC to diagnosis and starting titration. I know some people who have only had to wait a couple of weeks, it’s another lottery based on the individual providers and the phase of the moon.
Meanwhile we’ve spent close to £7k on my kids ADHD/ASD diagnoses privately as it was a 4 year waiting list for a NHS CAHMS referral. Luckily the GP has agreed to take on the private diagnosis and prescribe the meds under a shared care agreement.
I’ve no idea what happens in a few years when my kid hits 18. I’m hoping they don’t have to back out of the SCA leaving them without access to meds. It’s something I need to research although the fallback is paying privately I guess.
What an amazing system! Poof! just like magic you can pretend that sophisticated medicines, that are years in development, should cost nothing just because! And then you can act all smug about it!
Cost nothing to the user, yes. You can then have the state, a sophisticated purchaser, decide what it's willing to pay.
Not at all. The majority of the cost is subsidised by the Government who acts as a central purchaser to minimise profiteering and keep prices down.
Everyone pays a little bit towards it all via general taxation but if you prefer a system where individuals have to front the vast majority of their own costs, much of which is just being extracted as profit, then you are welcome to that. I prefer the option that leans a lot more towards socialism than rapacious capitalism.