Nothing in this world is free and now, courtesy of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, dying isn’t neither.
Valeant is the company that makes the drug Seconal, most commonly used in physician-assisted suicides, and it’s notably used for those that are terminally ill.
According to an NPR report, a lethal dose of the drug — 100 capsules — cost a little under $200 in 2009, a reasonable price for a prescription medicine. Over the following six years, however, its price rose to $1,500 and has now made its way to $3,000.
I always held hope that not everyone in this country was driven by greed. Jack In the Box has, after all, kept its tacos at $1. But after reading about this greedy pharmaceutical company doing everything they can to make money off people dying, health insurance just doesn’t seem worth having.
According to Dr. David Grube, Seconal is “not a complicated thing to make. There’s no research being done on it; there’s no development.”
On whether the price of Seconal should have risen as dramatically as it did, Grube said, “That, to me, is unconscionable.”
In recent years, deductible prices have gone up, the level of coverage has gone down and the monthly costs seem to make health insurance not worth having. You’re not getting your money’s worth on any account.
If you are paying more than $200 a month with a deductible that goes well into the thousands and your coverage doesn’t cover even half of a doctor’s visit or the cost of a prescription, one would wonder why you even bother to have health insurance.
Rather than sending out a check every month to pay for your monthly health care, you could just pocket the cost. Yes, there is a chance you may get sick or hurt, but unless you’re Evel Knievel or partying like you’re Lil Wayne,, chances are you’ll be fine.
I love going to the doctor, especially the dentist. Even though it’s unfortunate you have to see them, health care providers are there to help us get better. But no matter how great some of these doctors are or how great the medication you need is, the system is broken.
Valiant Pharmaceuticals is not alone. The majority of health care companies are profiting off you, not helping you get better.
When Martin Shkreli jacked the price of Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent for HIV-positive individuals, I thought this guy was one-in-a-million. There’s no way this type of behavior could continue with any other company.
I was wrong.
Save your money, folks. Health insurance just doesn’t seem worth having. We can blame Obamacare all we want, but the fact is with the direction the economy was heading, cuts and price increases were bound to happen.
My best suggestion for you is to just foot the health care penalty at the end of the year for not having health care coverage. Maybe down the line this health care fiasco will straighten itself out, but I doubt there will be any changes to these high premiums or high deductibles anytime soon.
There isn’t much you can do besides save your money and hope you don’t get sick. I might sound crazy, but when you’re paying around $200 a month for health care that can have low coverage and you don’t end up getting sick, you could have saved yourself well over two grand.
Maybe I don’t sound that crazy after all.
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