Health, Wealth and Happiness » Alternative Medicine

Do you love your pharmacist?

admin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:28:03 +0000

I certainly take the many forwarded letters I get with a grain of salt. Those who know me understand that having married a Dr. of Chiropractic, I am already suspicious of the onslaught of the billions of dollars of prescriptions that are handed out each year.

Then, of course, we march in, hand it to the Pharmacist, and ‘take it like a man’ with a grimace when we hear the cost. Sometimes we have insurance coverage and sometimes we utter a weak “Is there a generic for that?” In either case top dollars are being paid for little pills that have been cranked out in dizzying numbers at their plants.

I will save the alternative medicine side of things for another time. And, for the record I AM a card-carrying member of Costco.

Costco – Unbelievable!

Story verified @http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/generic.asp

Make sure you read to the end. You will be amazed.
Let’s hear it for Costco! (This is just mind-boggling!)Make sure you read all the way past the list of the drugs. The woman that signed below is a Budget Analyst out of federal Washington , DC offices.

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries. In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America .

Celebrex:100 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.60
Percent markup: 21,712%

Claritin:10 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
Percent markup: 30,306%

Keflex:250 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
Percent markup: 8,372%

Lipitor:20 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
Percent markup: 4,696%

Norvasc:10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
Percent markup: 134,493%

Paxil:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
Percent markup: 2,898%

Prevacid:30 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
Percent markup: 34,136%

Prilosec: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
Percent markup: 69,417%

Prozac:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
Percent markup: 224,973%

Tenormin:50 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
Percent markup: 80,362%

Vasotec:10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
Percent markup: 51,185%

Xanax:1 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
Percent markup: 569,958%

Zestril:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
Percent markup: 2,809%

Zithromax:600 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
Percent markup: 7,892%

Zocor:40 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63
Percent markup: 4,059%

Zoloft:50 mg
Consumer price: $206.87
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75
Percent markup: 11,821%

Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone should know about this.
It pays to shop around! This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreen’s on every corner. On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit , did a story on generic drug prices gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. So often we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills.
The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are saving $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!
Sharon L. Davis
Budget Analyst
U.S. Department of Commerce
Room 6839
Office Ph: 202-482-4458
Office Fax: 202-482-5480
E-mail Address:sdavis@doc.gov

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs.

I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience I had to use the drug Compazine which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients.

I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.

I would like to mention, that although Costco is a ‘membership’ type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.

I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and passing it into your own e-mail, and send it to everyone you know with an e-mail address.

DON’T THINK. DON’T SPEAK. MOVE!

Copyright © 2010 Health, Wealth and Happiness. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@rickemmerich.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

I don’t want your stinkin’ flu shot!

admin — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:38:47 +0000

It’s always the prettiest, most smiling young lady in the Pharmacy. She cranks up the friendly smile to an 11 and asks THE question: “Would you like your flu shot today?” She maintains the level 11 even as I say no with a look of horror on my face. It moves to a level 10 as I comment “Please don’t poison me.” She keeps smilin’ and simply looks for her next victim.

It’s really hard to find fault with the new Safeway. They have raised the bar for groceries in Honolulu. Heck, this would raise the bar in Laguna Beach. It’s full of class, and cool departments….probably 200 kinds of cheese. But then there’s the flu-shot lady.

See, we were brought up to TRUST the MD, the Family Doc. We did what we were told. Now many of us in the baby boomer department are finding that our parents are in nursing homes totally dependent on multiple prescriptions. Some of those pills are there simply to ward off the bad effects of the other pills. I mean the big Pharmaceutical Companies have larger budgets than some European Countries.

People that push these pills to the Drs get paid an awful lot. I know a lady that got fed up and walked away from her (high) salary with a Pharmaceutical giant cuz they insisted she ‘push’ one day ritalin pills for kids.

Anyway, where was I. Yeah, when the ‘experts’ tell us that we shold have a flu shot, some of us say “OK, which arm” or is it the shoulder?

Blindly we allow them to put Thimerosal carrying along with it a host of heavy metals into our system. And btw, the flu virus itself.

My 85 year old friend. Stop right there. Anyone that has made it to 85, living healthy, with genes of the men that hit a hundred before him. Who still drives, works, manages people and makes a lot of money. I’m gonna pull up a chair and listen to what THAT guy has to say about health.

He, who btw has raised at least 6 children that are Drs, was ‘tricked’ into taking a flu shot this fall. The Dr was not honest with him, and before my friend knew it, the Dr was about to stick him. He sighed and said, OK, but really did not like the whole scenario.

Well, guess what. As he had the previous 2 times when he got a shot, HE GOT THE FLU.

Anyway, we need to be more healthy. There are so many alternative health options today. I went to my Acupuncturist today and left feeling great. My Integrative Medicine Dr almost refuses to offer a prescription. There are so many other ways.

My wife, (Dr. Malia) a Holisitic Chiropractor has opened my eyes to so much more where the body heals itself. She has made it (Real) clear how my past diet had led to my past health issues.

I don’t use caffeine anymore, watch the sugar, salt, red meat and anything with preservatives. (Want to know where THEY come from?) For years I have used vitamins, now I use the BEST, along with other recommended supplements. Each day I drink Zrii, a tonic based on 5000 years of Ayurvedic Medicine. It is endorsed by the Chopra Center for Well-Being.

Dr. Deepak Chopra says in his new book “The scientific community has shifted from outright rejection and ridicule of alternative healing approaches to serious investigation. If you access the National Library of Medicine’s database, you will find over forty thousand articles on alternative and complementary medicine with over sixteen hundred on herbal medicines alone. Meditation, yoga, massage, and nutritional approaches are increasingly embraced as maionstream tools for healing……Almost every pharmacy in America (is) carrying its own line of natural medicines.” Read the book Perfect Health, now. You will see why it is a best seller.

Anyway, I gotta go to the Safeway and get some natural apple juice for my wife. Her gall bladder is acting up. (No flu-shot lady at THIS time of night.)