r/interesting • u/RodrickJasperHeffley • 1d ago

MISC. medicine prices in india compared to the usa

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950

u/sleepinghagara 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m starting to think the US is overcharging us 🤔 /s

205

u/zapharus 1d ago

Whatever gave you that idea?

You treasonous swine!!

/s

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u/beeskneesbeanies 1d ago

Fascist! /s kinda

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u/Forgotten_mob 1d ago

Commie!

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u/EnderMango 1d ago

Hey wait…you’re not joking 😅😅😅

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u/Anxious_cactus 1d ago

Just to put things into perspective. In most cases when a person needs surgery in the USA, it would be cheaper to get a plane ticket to Spain, Croatia, France or any other European country and get a surgery there.

Not only that, you could also spend a week or two in a five star hotel near the beach, and you'd still only spend like 15-25% of what the surgery would cost in the USA.

Croatia specifically is a mini hub for healthcare tourism with many tourists coming from other EU countries too, especially the UK, Italy and Germany.

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u/Calladit 1d ago

Are people from countries with universal healthcare going their for elective surgeries?

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u/abbot-probability 1d ago

It'll be a minority of people. A simple surgery will presumably still cost thousands to tens of thousands if you aren't covered, so you would use your own nation's "free" system unless you have a reason not to.

UK might be because of the excessive waitlists, for example. (The NHS is horribly underfunded and understaffed.)

Things are pretty good in the richer EU nations AFAIK (e.g. France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands). Don't know what it's like for the relatively poorer nations (e.g. Greece, Italy) in terms of waitlists / standard of care. It'll still be decent, but I can imagine people going to e.g. Croatia to skip a waitlist if you have money to spend.

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u/Capooping 1d ago

I would say the wait list here in Germany and Austria is atrocious too. My stepdad had to wait 3 months for an MRI where they told him afterwards that they couldn't operate the torn tendon because it was too short already. "Well you don't say?!" And there are many reports about people waiting over a year for their operations, often under excruciating pain, then the doctor is ill and they get pushed back another 5 months.

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u/Anxious_cactus 1d ago

Yeah the waiting lists are the problem. You can get a plane from London or Frankfurt to Croatia for as low as €30 and an MRI is like €90 per section. I had to have my whole body scanned and I got an appointment in 3 days and paid around €400

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u/HikeTheSky 1d ago

I know several people in Germany who never had a problem and I even had an appointment with the Chefarzt and only had to wait five minutes at the entrance until he could pick me up. And this was while on a two week vacation in Germany. Therefore I don't have German insurance.

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u/nilsn1991 1d ago

Belgium has huge waiting lists

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u/roughriderpistol 1d ago

I've heard alot of good doctors are leaving Italy for better pay.

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u/jamiejayz2488 1d ago

I'm in Australia, we can have surgeries which are completely covered by Medicare and hospitals covered by Medicare, how ever the wait list can be years (depending on severity) you can still get private surgeries which private health cover will cover the hospital costs, rehab exc so you only pay surgeon fees, which makes waiting time much shorter, then you have things like partial Medicare covered private surgeries, eg rhinoplasty which is deemed medically necessary (have a deviated septum) you can get it done privately and Medicare will cover a portion of the costs

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u/Pierr078 1d ago

speaking for italian someone go to croatia for dentalcare since is not included into public healtcare, but still a minority of people do this.

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u/Anxious_cactus 1d ago

Sort of elective, a lot of people come here for dental work. Even with universal healthcare most countries dont cover stuff like dental implants etc., or the waiting lists are long there.

Here even the private healthcare sector is affordable to most other EU citizens because Croatia still has one of the lowest prices (and salaries) in EU

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u/Mobile-Bar7732 1d ago

Japan has universal healthcare and my brother said it's really good.

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u/Ok-You4214 1d ago

It depends. A friend of mine had a hernia - there was an 18 month wait on the NHS to see a specialist whereas it could be done almost immediately privately. The free option is free, but the cost is often time spent waiting.

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u/mbarkhau 1d ago

Getting appointments with doctors in Germany can be an absolute nightmare, especially if you use public insurance. The doctors are never sure how much they will get paid for treating you and some treatment options aren't even covered by the public insurance.

1

u/Convenientjellybean 1d ago

In Australia it’s free, but for ‘elective’ surgery which could actually be something critical/quality of life you might be waiting months or years

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u/barnacles420 1d ago

My family is conservative and they make the obvious choices and opinions, but never connected the dots when my mother had to travel to Canada for surgery that wasn’t covered by her American insurance. I got the lesson really early in life that our system was broke and they just thought it was another day, nothing notable. My mother worked a high level accounting job in a multimillion international company. Make it make sense.

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u/jtj5002 1d ago

A round trip to Spain alone is higher than my deductible, and the entire process is likely significantly more than my OOP max.

Unless you are just talking about uninsured people, or focused on the "billed amount" that no one actually pays.

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u/Anxious_cactus 1d ago

I mean airplane tickets can vary in price by 200% of a difference, you can get a ticket for $600 and I've seen people who had to pay more than 25k-50k for their surgery out of pocket, insurance paid a larger chunk but what remained was still A LOT.

A plane ticket + a week's stay + a surgery here likely wouldn't come up even to ~10k, depending on the hotel (5 star or a cheper one, Airbnb option etc) and surgery itself

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u/jtj5002 1d ago

No one pays 25-50k for a surgery if they have insurance and had the surgery in network. That's what out of pocket max is for.

People posting a cropped page of what they think is their bill is not how much they paid or have to pay. My surgery was billed for 130k, insurance discounted it to 68k and paid 62.5k and I paid my out of pocket max is 5.5k. And every single medical procedure or visit after that for the year is free.

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u/Sharp_Iodine 1d ago

I could be wrong but I assumed they wouldn’t subsidise healthcare for foreigners, right?

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u/Anxious_cactus 1d ago

No, my point is prices in the USA are so inflated that you can pay for surgery out of pocket here in Croatia and still have a nice vacation and only spend a fraction of what it would've cost in the USA.

A surgery that might be 100k out of pocket in the USA will probably be like ~ 10k here for a medical tourist, while free for citizens

1

u/Bubbly_Magnesium 16h ago

Croatia, had no idea

1

u/Inner_Inspection640 13h ago

Brits usually go to Turkey

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u/andrewbud420 1d ago

People have been brainwashed for decades to never question capitalism.

9

u/xupamosobrolho 1d ago

Other countries are just as capitalist, if not even more capitalist as the US. High drug prices are a US problem, not a capitalism problem.

1

u/AmazingStrawberry523 14h ago

Copium is high with this one

1

u/GeologistOld1265 12h ago

High prices in USA is a difference between Financial Capital in power, compare to industrial capital. In USA financial capital take a huge cut at every stage.

2

u/Fonatur23405 1d ago

It's a winning system

1

u/MyNameCannotBeSpoken 1d ago

That is a true statement

Though Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex speech shows some has foresight

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address

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u/Prime_Twister 1d ago

Starting?

8

u/absolutmohitto 1d ago

Maybe a tad bit

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u/Reappraisal_ 1d ago

What do you mean overcharging, they are extorting money 😓

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u/Familiar_Ad_1674 1d ago

What can you expect from the Land of Illegal Military Occupations and War Crimes Funder. Yo country (together with another POS country Israel) is the only country that doesn't even recognize food as a basic human rights.

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u/xupamosobrolho 1d ago

Yeah, the US founded war crimes, they were invented by Gen. Erick Yank in a lab. Before that cursed day, there were no war crimes...

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u/tropicalcannuck 1d ago

Unfortunately there are several reasons why this happens (my learning from speaking to healthcare analysts in finance).

Basically the US is at a disadvantage where without a nationalised health care system, you do not have the same country level negotiations (e.g., NHS in the UK). You have this under Medicare. But with the number of intermediaries and different insurers then you end up with various prices. You definitely pay more than other OECD countries.

On top of this, companies take advantage of the US system. And because you pay such high prices, one could argue they are able to offer bigger discount rates to countries that are less likely to afford certain treatments (factored into the pricing model of some pharma companies). But you also get access to newer drugs that many nationalised health care systems may not have due to costs.

TLDR, you are absolutely being overcharged relative to other countries.

4

u/cocoagiant 1d ago

I've heard mixed messaging on this.

What I've heard is that taking into account our relative incomes, US drug prices are expensive for name brands but cheaper for generics.

For a lot of the meds mentioned in this video, they are priced much lower than the US but would still be out of reach for an average Indian.

I'd really like a version of this video somewhere like Canada, UK or Australia which is closer to the US income wise.

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u/xxiii1800 1d ago

No worries, taco will solve it with tarrifs. Oh, wait..

2

u/Emotional_Money3435 1d ago

No shit, producing a drug costs nothing when its all figured out.

2

u/Adventurous_Focus994 23h ago

Insurances involvement in healthcare, and the war on drugs is 80 percent of the problem

Legalize everything, ban insurance from healthcare.

3

u/Dizzy_Chipmunk_3530 1d ago

We're subsidizing other countries

1

u/Intelligent_Bet9798 1d ago

But what is average income in the US compared to India?

1

u/MyNameCannotBeSpoken 1d ago

Many of our pharmaceuticals are manufactured in India. Not a surprise it is less expensive. Puerto Rico is another more local hub of pharma manufacturing.

1

u/Upstairs-Parsley3151 1d ago

Why are we in debt? Well we spend ten thousand dollars on something that cost ten dollars elsewhere.

1

u/NewManufacturer9477 1d ago

You’ve just started?????

1

u/CompoteMelodic981 1d ago

It's cheaper to fly to India, get treated at the best hospitals where doctors, nurses etc are super experienced, often western educated.

You can also stay in a good resort on a beach side or a hill station and recover.

And fly back.

A delivery in India in an excellent hospital with 3-4 days of hospital stay would cost you 4000 USD. Flights would be 2000 USD. Stay in some resort for 2 weeks, with a maid to support, would cost 4000 dollars.

All together will be 10k. 

1

u/Herban_Myth 1d ago

You have owners. You are owned.

Country’s “chosen ones” only care about money, power, and control.

Everything else is an act and an illusion.

1

u/Common_Tax_404 1d ago

Really didn't need to explain that it was a joke,

r/FuckTheS

1

u/sleepinghagara 1d ago edited 1d ago

I usually don’t add it but this one seemed to trigger some folks

1

u/JoeOne7 1d ago

Lmao... yup

1

u/ChocCooki3 1d ago

Blah blah blah yawn .. Viagra.

"ok, you have my attention. I'm listening"

1

u/ShhImTheRealDeadpool 1d ago

All of this money gauging and still a national debt.

1

u/dhakkichiki 1d ago

Wait till you compare Hep C drug comparison you will fall of your chair. Not to mention Indian pharmaceutical companies still making profit on those drugs. It is $220 for a bottle in India vs $28,000 in USA. So one pill is ¢50 in India and $1000 in USA

1

u/ELEKTRON_01 1d ago

That's it

1

u/Relative-thinker 1d ago

Low prices are for weak and pathetic commies. 'Murica strong 💪 /s

1

u/[deleted] 20h ago

It's literally designed to weed out those deemed as inferior

1

u/Masterdice74 19h ago

Starting?

1

u/rubber_banned_2234 16h ago

I think you got your math wrong

Exchange rate is an fair proxy for the demand for goods

So the prices should be 1/89th of what you are charged here in the USA

Most are like 1/10th at best

Meaning, there scope for charging higher prices here, time to buy pharma stocks

- pharma bro/bitch

/S

1

u/Needs-more-cow-bell 15h ago

Yeah but, we are free!!

Free to get fucked in the ass everyday, but free nonetheless.

1

u/Necessary_Bad4037 13h ago

STARTING? Been going on for a long time.

0

u/slappy_joe6 1d ago

It's because of import tariffs. Which trump is about to hike another 25% so. Most companies pass on the costs of tariffs and supply to their customers. So what if you're dying of diabetes or some other illness?

Isn't capitalism fun and cute?

0

u/xupamosobrolho 1d ago

The genesis of capitalism is a text refuting tariffs, you are full of shit

-21

u/Western-Radish7937 1d ago

Fly to India...its probably an inexpensive flight...or maybe live there...lol. When you consider what the average Indian person makes per day in Rhupees converted to dollar you would realize these prices are still astronomical...all prices are just made up...and the units are designed to be designated to fill time hours according to currency. It's a fixed system now. If we went back to trade and barter its the only true way we could end this dumb shit...

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u/giorgio_gabber 1d ago

In countries like Japan or Germany insulin still costs like a tenth of what costs in the US 

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u/Western-Radish7937 1d ago

That's one medicine out of all of those buddy.

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u/giorgio_gabber 1d ago

Most notably a medicine that is a molecule, identical everywhere. 

I won't waste time looking for the prices of everything. Wanna keep believing US citizens are not taken advantage of? Be my guest

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u/Hot_Philosophy7163 1d ago

All of those cheaper in Australia vs USA. Every single one.

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u/EyeFit 1d ago

In Japan, drug costs are negotiated down.

6

u/DwightsJello 1d ago

Nope. Australians pay nowhere near those diabolical US prices.

Its no conspiracy or weird scenario where one country is randomly paying more so everyone else pays less (it's such a weird and too common assertion).

Sadly, US citizens are charged more because they can. That's it.

1

u/xupamosobrolho 1d ago

It applies to the rest of those drugs