How mich do you think an inhaler is in US ?

[Barsh]

Go on...guess.

IvyKate - a salbutamol inhaler costs £2.50 at cost price in the UK. Some online pharmacies sell them at around £7 to £10 on a private prescription.

For a family of 3, I pay $450 a month. But my employer pays 2/3 of the cost as well.

KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN YOU VOTE we need to protect our NHS !!

It’s a wonder why so many Americans seem against Obama health care. Perhaps I’m wrong but the fact that Trump was voted in, who is completely against it, makes me think it can’t be that big of an agenda to the majority?...

.... perhaps I should have rephrased that and said, it’s a wonder more Americans aren’t pushing for a free healthcare system... doesn’t seem like it’s a dealbreaker, in the way that say Brexit was here.

I rocked up at the emergency room at 6 30 pm one night last year, sent by my doctor. I had my burst appendix out at midnight, keyhole surgery. I left the hospital at 9 am next morning. The total bill for that was $16000. I "only" had to pay $4000 of it though
My brother in the UK had his out a month later, had a couple of complications, he was in hospital for 2 weeks. Once I realised he was ok all I could think was thank fck that wasnt me, the bill would have broke me

The difficulty with the system is that you don’t even know how much you’ll have to pay.

I have just had a $432 bill for lab work, but there is a $380 discount for my insurer, the insurer paid $50 and I pay $2.99. If I didn’t have insurance I’d have to pay the whole $432. It’s bonkers! And we pay less toward the end of the year as we’ve used up our copay excess so hope if you’re going to have a big emergency it happens at year end!

We pay about $6k a year insurance and the company pays $20k or so.

We bought back up salbutamol inhaler from pharmacy in Tenerife earlier this year for €3.50. To be fair, rules should have changed and people shouldn't be able to buy them otc now, but we did. €3.50

If you want to know the price the NHS pays in England and Wales for generic drugs they’re all listed in the Drug Tariff
www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/Drug%20Tariff%20December%202019.pdf
Drug prices start on p173, prices are in pence. You can see an Epipen is £26.45, note the pharmacy will be paid about £1.20 on top of this for dispensing it

£1.50 for a Ventolin Evohaler

The NHS price for Seretides range from £18 for an Evohaler 50 to £32.74 for an Accuhaler 500

My friend who is a professor at Harvard and has insurance through them played 50 or 60 dollars recently for an inhaler after insurance.
My son was in the ER for 4 hours for a wheeze. 4000 dollars for some nebulisers and a chest X Ray.
It isn’t that insurance will pay out. They paid out 3500 of the 500. (Refuses to pay for the X Ray, apparently they deemed it ‘unnecessary’). It took several phone calls to get them to pay the 3500.
I know people with kids with chronic illnesses often end up buying some bills because they just don’t have the time/energy to keep calling insurance. And the threatening bills keep coming.

I think in the US people are much more wary of the state. Doctors don’t work for a nationalised health service. And so they literally don’t believe me when I say DS2 was in the NICU for 69 days and when we left we never ever saw a bill. They think there must be a catch (or I am lying). I am honest and say that I paid for it with my taxes but they totally don’t believe that is all there is. It is so alien to them to have a health system that isn’t trying to screw you over that they just can’t believe it.

Btw the ER wait for my 4000 dollar visit was longer than any NHS A&E visit with DS2 (and he’s had a few!).

Paid not played.

When my son needed an inhaler, we paid $65 but this included three months worth of medicine. This was in 2009.

My husband had insurance provided from a different provider and the inhaler and three months of medication cost us $15 in 2010.

My son no longer needs an inhaler.

The actual difference was that the first employer, in 2009, was a very small employer (under 50 employees) and the second had over 2,000 employees nationwide.

It all depends on how many employees are in a company to be able to negotiate better rates for their employees. It's crap but it is like this.

Btw, there is no "pre-existing conditions" since the Obamacare thing went on but my premiums shot up $500 a month once it was enacted.

US government spending on healthcare is broadly in line with the UK and most other developed countries - around 7 to 9% of GDP. In the UK and many other places that government spending provides universal healthcare and private individuals pay a much smaller amount. In the USA it does not.

So the USA's system doesn't make taxes any cheaper, it makes things a lot more expensive for sick people, and it doesn't have better healthcare outcomes.

The cost of inhalers is here on page 19.

It says the cost of salbutomol for a year varies between £21.84 to £91.73 a year, I have no idea how many inhalers they class as needed over the year. I know when I request them I get given two at a time but they start calling you in for checks if you request them too frequently.

What was the USA cost?

Look out this will be the UK soon

I think Americans see it as choice (freedom to choose your doctor/ hospital/ drug). It’s also very anti-American to believe in centralized anything. They’re all about keeping as close to the individual and individual ‘freedoms’ as possible.

This sense of me/I/my freedoms/my rights, versus society/we/the collective/sacrifices informs everything and explains a lot. The powers that be are powerful because they embody and promote this philosophy. This particular understanding of “freedom” and “liberty” can be very appealing to a certain type of person.

Of course, the tragedy is that it works immensely well for the winners, and not at all for the losers.

I'm in the US and it can actually be quite hard to get some UK folks to understand the cost of medical care here. A relatively informed friend of mine refused to believe you have to pay for birth or for your kids to get treatment.

I'm with a large employer, for me alone I pay $160 a month for insurance with a $1500 in-network deductible. Once I meet that I still need to pay a 20% copay for in-network treatment until I reach $3000 (my out of pocket maximum). Out of network is a $3,000 deductible and $8,000 out of pocket max with 40% copays.

It's not necessarily easy to stay in-network though, especially in an emergency. Also, insurance won't cover the cost of some treatments if you don't try other treatments first.

The other headache is medical billing. They write codes on your notes for everything they use- a single ibuprofen, cotton bud, finger cap etc. You need to scrutinise every single bill and negotiate on them as there are always errors or overinflated costs. Oh, and don't get sick in December with an issue that runs through til January. You'll be paying your deductible twice in many cases.

What irks me the most is that the medical care hardly differs, bar the doctors, nurses and a middle man (insurance company) being richer. It's a 6-week wait to see my doctor right now and they don't even have evening hours.

I know nothing about American healthcare so please forgive me if I ask a stupid question. I am interested to know how much you pay for Healthcare each month. Is it per person?

I am in the UK and cannot get a particular medicine here because my GP will not prescribe it to me. So I buy it from another country. Can you not buy your drugs elsewhere?

Here (in the UK) we are deducted a significant amount from our salary each month in National Insurance Contributions - I know it is not Healthcare Insurance, but it is significant amount all the same. What proportion of you salary each month would you be paying in the US for healthcare?

@notangelinajolie the cost of insurance per month and the cost of medical treatment would differ.

Through my employer I have 3 options: $110/month ($3000 deductible), $160/month ($1500 deductible), $220/month ($500 deductible). My employer is covering about 75% of the cost of those policies. My costs are on the lower end I believe. Premiums and deductibles are higher when you add kids or your spouse.

You could buy drugs in another country, but there are limits to what you can get imported and there are scammers out there too. There are people who travel to Mexico for treatments they can't afford in the US.

Giving costs as a proportion of salary wouldn't be indicative- it's the same whether you are the CEO or paid minimum wage. And medical costs fall on top of insurance costs- until you meet your deductible your insurance won't kick in.

Can I check - ‘deductible’ are the equivalent of an excess on the policy? And is that for each medical condition or an annual total?

I remember forgetting to buy Zovirax for a cold sore before flying to the US and thinking oh well, we’ll buy some when we get there.
Nope
£5/tube in the UK, something like$600 on prescription in the US.

I was watching this twitter.com/berniesanders/status/1201968538895958018?s=21

But googling suggests $30 to 60 for an unbranded up to 150 to 300 for a branded.

I have had to buy an epipen privately in the UK. It was £35. How can they be $800 in the US?

When DS1 was taken ill with a bad chest in the US, we were prescribed those steroid tablets you dissolve in water (prednisolone). The course of tablets cost $3. I was faintly amused at this, having been told how much more expensive these things were in the US, because of course in the UK that would have been £9 for a prescription.