Oh same here ER. Copay on most of my stuff is around $20 for a month's supply but then again I'm not on anything that's truly revolutionary. Some of the horror stories I've heard about the more exotic medicines make your head spin.

However, one of the medicines I take and pay $20 for is a simple steroidal nasal spray for sinus problems. So if I'm paying $20, my insurance company is probably adding another 10 or 15 dollars to that. Assuming that part of the cost of that is research and testing one would think that that portion would be next to nothing today since basic steroids have been around for decades and those costs would have been long ago recouped. The spray itself is almost all water with just a tiny amount of the actual medicine. My guess is the cost to produce that little bottle with the magic elixir inside might be $1.00 if I'm really generous.

It puts my little medical relief package in the realm of highway robbery. Oh, I won't go broke spending my $20 a month but why in the world are we putting up with this? It's almost like the phenomena of women's clothing. My wife bought a swimsuit the other day. Nice but it'll never be on the cover of Vogue. Its base price was $95. The fabric in it might have been worth 3 or 4 dollars. She had no choice but to pay it though. All the swimsuits in the rack were that much or more. If I need a swimsuit, mine will cost $10 bucks at the very most. Why the difference? Who knows. It's beyond my computing power.

In many ways our country and probably the world could stand a reboot to fix these things, some global catastrophe where just living, breathing, eating, and shitting were all we cared about. I'd prefer it happen during some future generation long after I and anyone I really care about lives but something has to humble us again to start valuing the things that really matter.

Art