Why I Had to Buy My Wife's Inhaler on the Dark Web | Hacker News Reader

Why I Had to Buy My Wife's Inhaler on the Dark Web

motherboard.vice.com

29 pointstraverseda12 comments

"We had just obtained health insurance through Kentucky’s health care exchange... a plan with low prescription co-pays...the total ... with insurance applied, turned out to be around $300."

I have Cystic Fibrosis, so I understand expensive medicines.

There's the co-pay, but also the deductible. At the beginning of the cycle, you have to meet the deductible before you start seeing the low co-pay.

In my situation, I know January is always a big hit, where I automatically spend $1000, since in a given month I take tens of thousands of dollars in medications. Every month after that, I may spend tens of dollars for the same prescriptions.

Tens of thousands sounds high, even for CF. I am curious if that means you are taking Vertex.

(No obligation to answer. I also have CF and the figures are usually more like $2-3k/mo, last I checked. So, just wondering.)

No, I'm not on Vertex (Kalydeco), since I'm delta f508 homozygous, and that treatment was just approved.

Obviously I'm referring to retail cost. A quick peek at the most expensive ones, according to my insurance plan: Creon ($4500), Tobi ($7300), Pulmozyme ($5400), Cayston ($7200).

Thank you.

It's depressing that our medicine is so incredibly overpriced in this day and age. This is the problem we need to fix before we worry about getting everyone health care, in my opinion.

look up Hydroxyprogesterone Caproate. $1500 a dose to keep a baby in the womb.

My step father has to take a pill that costs insurance $800 a day.

I have respiratory problems. I used to pay insurance claims for a living. At one time, I was studying to become an urban planner. In order to get off the prescription drugs, whose side effects were killing me, I have pursued a whole lot alternative treatments for my medical condition.

I will just say that there are a great many things wrong in the world that contribute to this kind of scenario. For one thing, asthma is on the rise due to pollution. We are slow to address problems like that, even while documenting the connection, meanwhile we are happy to keep prescribing drugs for it and then complain about the financial cost. Being sick all the time and needing drugs all the time costs a lot more than mere money.

I hate the state of things in America today and I hate how insurance works. But there is really a lot more going on than just that. It's sad that we seem unable to have good discussions about other underlying causes and mostly just want to talk trash about pricing.

Isn't pollution in the US on a fairly steady decline? I know for instance modern cars make 5% of the junk cars in the 80s did.

I don't know if overall pollution is on a fairly steady decline. I do know that population is up and there are studies that correlate poor air quality in certain neighborhoods with increases in asthma diagnoses, need for medications, frequency of attacks, etc. This is something urban planners used to concern themselves with -- how the built environment and development impacts human health -- and that focus is much less common these days.

I've bought my Albuterol rescue inhalers from an overseas pharmacy for years.

Price of one, with insurance copay, at Walgreens: $15

Price of one (I never order just one) from overseas: $4.50

WHat an informative write-up to get a layman started with darknet. It is also reassuring that people could trust it to some extent.

We live in a world that is turned upside down \o/. The good way is just the bad way turned inside out. As it is above; so it is below!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com