I did a quick search, and it seems that the full price of generic version of this inhaler in Germany costs between 30 and 40 euros. With a prescription is either 5 euros or free depending on why it was prescribed.
The problem of the US healthcare is much deeper than just the insurance companies. Every single layer of the system is rotten.
The problem of the US healthcare is much deeper than just the insurance companies. Every single layer of the system is rotten.
While this is true, the core of the rot is in the insurance companies. Institutions warp to shape themselves around the locus of power - and the power here is held by the insurance companies, through whom almost all healthcare payment passes through the greedy, grasping hands of.
Institutions warp to shape themselves around the locus of power.
This is a marvelous sentence.
After a hospital stay I went through the line by line charges of a relative that had been at the hospital for two days.
$500 for an x-ray, $90 on three separate occasions for an OTC dose of Tylenol.
Everyone is padding things out for more money, but I have a feeling the nurses that actually attended to him didn't see a cent of it.
So you have drug companies changing hundreds to thousands of dollars for certain treatments that have a marginal cost of a few dollars.
You have hospital administrations that tack on thousands for noting that a particular staff member was part of a visit, no matter how trivial.
Insurance companies are denying coverage for necessary medical treatment, and constantly second guessing the opinions of the health care providers.
The insidious thing is the way the system is, they all independently end up with rationalizations. If insurance companies give providers and drug companies a blank check, then they will only price even worse. On the flip side, the "list price" is a lie to give insurance companies room to "negotiate" and so uninsured get screwed. Hospitals have to cover cost for care that will never be paid for, so everyone that would pay ends up paying more.
Health care is just not an area where privatization works that well. You might have some more elective facets be in the realm of privatization, but basic wellness just isn't a good fit.
the power here is held by the insurance companies
It's more complicated than that. Look at the fight over PBMs right now. The drug companies say the PBMs are the problem, and the PBMs say the drug companies are the problem, and both are right. The PBMs are an insurance/pharmacy cartel, and the drug companies are legalized monopolies due to drug patents. All of these are corporations whose sole goal is to maximize profits in a totally amoral fashion, and all of them have PR departments that will claim they have the complete opposite motivation that they actually do have. None of them are ever going to actually try to reduce prescription drug prices, but all of them will claim that they are trying as hard as they can and blame everyone else.
This is the intended result of corporate capitalism. It takes the individual out of the picture entirely and shifts the moral responsibility to an entirely amoral, profit-driven entity. When I look at the reaction to Luigi, maybe that's why people like it - they were never ok with the idea that the individuals can't be blamed. The corporation and blameless capitalism generally was created by unelected monarchs hundreds of years ago. No one asked for it and it's time for it to become something that brings individual responsibility back (preferably without the lawless vigilantes).
the problem is, its not healthcare but wealthcare for the rich who neither need nor deserve anything at all.
Every single layer of the system is rotten.
looking from far away at it, the us didn't even abandon slavery "yet" (how many decades is that now?). lies however seem to flourish exceptionally good. yes, i'ld say rotten it is. there are lots of examples.
i think this rotting might be more present in the us but now is a worldwide problem, no matter who started it.
I wouldn't use the word "rotten" in this case. The capitalist system designed by the burgeoise is working perfectly, the question that remains is: Working for whom? Well, the answer we all already know (except the ancaps)
Did a check, too. In Russia, it's $10 for locally produced, and $21 for French import.
American healthcare is a scam, even the original $66 figure is way overboard.
But people dying is beyond fucked up. Is there a way I could smuggle those to US over darknet or something?
Because memes aren't journalism:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/lawsuit-asthma-medication-price-spike-wisconsin/ (Feb 6 2025)
According to the lawsuit, Cole Schmidtknecht suffered from asthma all his life. He managed it with daily inhaler doses of the medication Advair Diskus and its generic equivalents.
That would be a "long term inhaler." Like taking any daily prescription. Not a "rescue inhaler" which acts in the short term to provide relief to acute symptoms. Further down:
[OptumRX] said that a review of Cole's claims showed that on the day he visited the pharmacy, he did buy a different asthma medication, generic Albuterol, for a $5 co-pay on Jan. 10 — a medication that it says he also obtained in October 2023. His case was handled "consistent with industry practice and the patient's insurance plan design," the company said.
Trunk, though, said Wednesday that the $5 generic prescription Cole filled was for his rescue inhaler, not the Advair Diskus inhaler that he took daily. He said Cole was not able to fill his Advair Diskus prescription because it had suddenly become too expensive.
The parents are 100% right, and the company damn well knows it. They're fucking lying.
Oh yeah, OptumRX is the UHC in-house mail order pharmacy.
The death occurred on Jan 21, 2024, ten days after trying to get his prescription filled. He only found out that the price had gone up when he went to the drugstore. Lawsuit is about OptumRX not giving a legally mandated 30 days' notice for drug price increases.
Goddam UHC. Ever see anyone have an asthma attack? It’s like watching someone drown in air, clawing at their throat and panicking. Just terrifying. Those UHC motherfuckers need a million more Luigis.
I have, many times... Didn't look quite like that, but was still terrifying. With asthma that bad, even when not having an attack, is a regular struggle to breathe.
Anyone who would jack up necessary asthma medicine to the point it's unaffordable should be hooked up to a histamine nebulizer and left there until they learn just how important it is to be able to breathe.
Because memes aren't journalism
New slogan for Ken Klippenstein's substack 😁
His case was "handled consistently with his insurance plan design" simply means they killed him for profit. If they designed the plan to have price jumps like that then they knew it would result in deaths.
American here with asthma. I can buy my inhaler over the counter for about $6 a canister in Mexico. I needed some more recently so I went to the local pharmacy with a prescription and it was $95 for two canisters with my high deductible insurance! The pharmacist looked up the cash price and it was $50! Why the higher price? The cash price doesn't go towards meeting my deductible. The insurance company is supposed to be negotiating on my behalf! Where is the "efficiency of the private sector?” Healthcare and insurance are broken in this country.
The efficiency isn't for the consumer. It's for the owner class.
I was completely crushed in 2020 when I lost my insurance and went to refill my meds without it. My meds had always been only $10 with insurance and I was so worried about how expensive it would be...it was still only $10. The only thing I used my insurance for was those meds I'd thought and I found out that my insurance wasn't even apparently covering them. (Meds for an autoimmune disease) Like...what had I been paying for insurance for? Every time I've had an emergency I've almost always had to pay out of pocket because I don't have enough things to reach my deductibles. To think of all the thousands I've spent over decades paying my insurance monthly is disgusting.
I'm sorry dude, you all deserve a better system.
They are all colluding. The hospital, doctors, insurance and the pharmacies all of them. Everyone gets a kickback. They know a large percentage just pays the higher price without doing research.
That man suffered from Stage 4 Luigi Deficiency.
Well, actually, it was a year before Luigi, but given UHC is operating exactly the same as before he would have died even if it weren't.
We need laws to LEGALLY hold these people accountable. Criminally.
We literally don't have to a system that does this to other humans. Luigi responded with the same violence they dish out daily.
Luigi responded with more kindness in his violence than healthcare CEOs do when they condemn innocent people to unnecessary violence, maiming and death, at least Luigi bothered to learn the face and name of the person he murdered and bore witness to the horror of the violence himself.
The healthcare CEO yawns and does another line of coke off his desk to wake up after browsing through yet another spreadsheet of all the people they are going to cut coverage for and thus likely cause life-ending circumstances to precipitate for.
One act of in-person violence to end the life of someone who decides to take a healthcare CEO job like this and can still go home and sleep at night... is woefully unable to speak to the size of the calamity unfolding here, and that is probably my best argument to someone out there not to do a Luigi. It will probably feel existentially underwhelming compared to the immense mountain of death and pain those mass murderers caused.
Make them pay in ways that will not end mercifully quickly, don't count on hell doing the job.
As someone who was born not breathing due to asthma, my heart goes out to this person. Those of you that don't understand what it's like to have your breath stolen from you...take a deep breath....fill your lungs and imagine their are some of us who literally can't. It is terrifying and sad. The thing ur body does naturally is what some ppl struggle with....just to breathe.....what a world....
Saw the price increase and had a heart attack. 😞
Sounds like a pre-existing condition.
And once trump gets rid of the ACA, we'll be back to worrying about having pre-existing conditions covered again employer's love having their employees locked in to working for them if they want their health issues treated.
We gotta get him out of the first charges first
Adt March, i went into Diabetic ketoacidosis and came very close to doing because my insurance company decided, when I was trying to refill my insulin, that I was not insulin-dependant. Then they said I was, but they'd only cover a diff3rent type of insukin. Then I wasn't insulin-dependant again. This went on for weeks while I rationed my insulin to try to survive.
I just went a weekend without my blood sugar sensor implant because the same rucking insurance demanded on a preauthorizarion when I tried to refill it. They tried to make it sound like my fault for not knowing they required a preauth. It's finally ready for pickup today.
Luigi is my personal hero. These motherfuckers won't stop killing people until they're afraid for their lives.
As a fellow T1D. Please, please utilize your endocrinologists free samples, your local JDRF, or order insulin from Canada. I’ve been in similar situations and it’s awful, but in the US, we unfortunately are at the mercy of an inhumane system. You should hoard supplies like no tomorrow, because you never know when you or friends might need help. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
I really shouldn't have to point out that Luigi did not fix this problem, but people are still operating under the bizarre impression that assassinating CEOs will fix a systemic healthcare issue and the Trump Administration will do something helpful with the cost of healthcare.
The fact that this happened and people are still thinking you can assassinate your way out of capitalist healthcare or that CEOs aren't just as disposable as everyone else in a corporation baffles me. But then people still think Republicans can be voted out of office.
I want what happened to have changed things for the better. It didn't. And assassinating five or fifteen more CEOs wouldn't get Trump to implement socialized medicine either.
I think people have given up on the idea that there will ever be any sort of health care reform (even though we did see prices frozen on some drugs last administration) and through the clearest sense of Americanism, guns and violence have become the only answer
Also hi Flying Squid, hope you're doing well <3
Hello. Could be better. I need a job.
I don't think anyone thought he did fix it all. But it's the same way normal, sane, people end up fighting insurgencies against the government. They feel like they've exhausted every other avenue to solve big problems.
We can't count on the government. We can't count on the doctors. And we certainly can't count on the corporations themselves. What's left?
That’s fair and constructive criticism (against those who claim violent revolution is the only answer.) So what solution do you propose would realistically bring about change?
I'm gonna have to disagree. When we're able to give these sociopaths something to fear you'll see change happen. Nothing else will work but violent revolution.
I'm in disbelief that someone would just die rather than do anything about assholes with an addiction to greed trying to murder you so they can make a few more bucks.
I mean, you try doing all the research necessary to effectively kill someone in ten days without an inhaler but plenty of asthma.
Luigi is going to be executed by the state. He isn't doing anything anymore.
If he gets executed, then he'll forever remain a symbol.
Damn. Even the school shooters aren't going to be executed.
