Price changes over 2025 and 2026, tabulated and dated — does this still hold? posts 61–90
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1 · go to the accepted answer.
Reading rather than contributing, but this is the most useful thread I have found on it.
Where I part company with post #61, and it is a narrow parting.
Agreed on Price changes, with one qualification that I think matters. The reasoning holds for the case as described. Change the starting assumption and it does not, and the starting assumption is the part nobody states.
Post #65 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Pharmacy acquisition cost: a pharmacy pays less than the patient pays, even at insurance rates. That margin is where the pharmacy's costs and profit live.
Price differences within a market are usually about scale, documentation and logistics rather than about anything mysterious.
Happy to be corrected if someone holds better data than mine.
I had written a reply contradicting post #65 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Nothing here is financial advice and none of it is a route to a transaction.
None of the above is medical advice and I am not qualified to give any.
The cost of an independent submission is worth stating in these threads, because it is the main reason people do not do it.
The honest answer is that it depends, and here is what it depends on.
Post #72 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Where a price includes consultation, device and follow-up, saying so makes a comparison possible. Most quoted figures do not.
That has held every time I have looked, which is not the same as always.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
I read post #70 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Comparing a licensed product's price to a research-use-only preparation's price is comparing two different things, and the difference is most of the explanation.
Anyone who has looked at this more carefully, please correct the record.
Clear enough that I do not think I have a follow-up, which is unusual.
Price changes: I would want to see the raw numbers rather than the summary before agreeing. Summaries lose exactly the information that would settle this.
Everything in post #75 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
The reason Price changes is hard to answer is that the obvious measurement and the relevant quantity are not the same thing, and substituting one for the other is silent.
A cheaper option that arrives slowly has a cost in the form of running out, and people rarely price that.
Post #79 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
The version of Price changes that I was taught turned out to be a teaching simplification. Useful, and not true in the way I had assumed it was.
The most useful pricing posts here are the ones that show the arithmetic rather than the conclusion.
It is one reading of the data and not the only reasonable one.
Cost per milligram is the only comparison that survives format differences, but even then it needs care. A pen and a vial are not the same product and cannot be compared on price per milligram alone because dead volume, wastage, and number of doses actually obtainable differ.
Coming back to post #83, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
List prices versus negotiated prices: the price a pharmaceutical company publishes and the price an insurance company or pharmacy actually pays differ substantially. List price is not what anyone pays.
Worth one more sentence than it usually gets.
Price changes is a good example of a question where the honest answer is boring and the interesting answers are unsupported. I would go with boring.
This follows post #87 rather than contradicting it.
I have been on both sides of the Price changes argument in this category within eighteen months, which should tell you how strong the evidence for either side is.
Pharmacy acquisition cost: a pharmacy pays less than the patient pays, even at insurance rates. That margin is where the pharmacy's costs and profit live.
This is the sort of thing the wiki should carry and currently does not.
Where a price includes consultation, device and follow-up, saying so makes a comparison possible. Most quoted figures do not.
Reading it again, the caveat matters more than the finding.