Posted by yxibow on January 31, 2007, at 23:52:24
In reply to Re: Why is valium relatively unpopular?, posted by notfred on January 31, 2007, at 21:23:25
> > Old drugs are rarely popular in the US. The Americans prefer meds which are new, shiny, heavily-advertised, expensive, and which come as 'samples' ;)
> >
> > Ed
>
> That is a very unfair generalization. HMO's do not pay for new drugs if older version are just as good.
>
>Its just a different model of consumerism in the US. I would love for us to have universal health care like NHS. But NHS also has problems just like in Canada where sometimes people take out American HMO/PPO insurance just to have a procedure crossborder without waiting for their kidneys to fail or something.
Sometimes "shiny new drugs" are a lifesaver for people. You can look to all the new retrovirals, chemotherapy agents, arthritis medications, etc. If I were to make a generalisation about the UK, it is that stodgy doctors hate benzodiazepines and use old drugs that have gathered dust on the shelves here in the US because of lack of sales and bad side effects. But I'm not living there so I won't make that generalisation.
I agree, we have overadvertizing which pumps up the cost of medication. Doesn't mean that people don't respond to new medications. My [nameless] PPO charges more for new medications, yes, sometimes doubles copays for medications it deems only fits a certain dosage or will only pay for part of the dosage. Medications are not as heavily regulated in pricing as Canada and definately not as regulated in England and probably to an extent in the EU.
poster:yxibow
thread:728281
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070125/msgs/728637.html