50th percentile for household income in the U.S. is $42,327 down significantly over 10 years. Meanwhile health care costs have more than doubled.
Medicynical Note: Compare the incomes earned in a year with the cost of recent drug advances, . Provenge for example is $93,000; Benlysta for Hep C is in the range of $50,000; Yervoy for melanoma $120,000. There are many more in this price range, most of which offer only slight benefit to patients compared with less expensive conventional therapies.
PHama’s pricing is irrational when compared with median and average incomes and their rate of growth. Somehow through creative marketing, lack of serious price negotiation, lack of competition, lack of concern regarding cost/efficacy and poor price controls in out insurance products, we’re bankrupting ourselves.
When the story of this era is written there will be disbelief, similar to that regarding the tulip bubble, that it ever happened and that it was allowed to happen.
Medicynic 