Why We See Soaring Prescription Costs—And How To Avoid Them

One of the great ironies of health care today is that we have more medications available than ever before, yet the costs have become so high that many patients can’t afford them. What good does it do to know there’s a drug that can help ease your pain when you have no way of affording it?

The answer, of course, is that it does you no good at all. And that brings us to another question: When you’re in that situation, how do you deal with the health problems that can come along?

While there are many answers to that question, one of the most likely ones you’ll hear is to seek out natural treatments. And one of the most common ones is cannabis oils. The number of patients using pure CBD oils to treat chronic pain from injuries and illnesses continues to grow, with more attention coming to hemp extracts every day.

Because these natural products are so much more affordable, we must wonder what makes commercial pharmaceuticals so much higher. There are several reasons.

The Development Process

The use of natural cures essentially involves starting with a product that’s known to be safe and then try it to see if it helps reduce the patient’s pain. When it works, the use becomes more widespread.

Pharmaceuticals do the opposite. They identify a specific type of pain problem, then attempt to build a drug that treats it. While their success rate is high, the process of development is so incredibly expensive that it carries forward into the final cost of the medication, increasing its cost for many years until the cost of development is finally defrayed.

Advertising

The next thing a company must do is let people know that their product exists. Consumers and doctors alike can’t possibly stay current on what is available for various conditions, so advertising is necessary. With the growing number of people suffering various injuries and diseases that create lifelong pain, the demand is high. It just needs to be found.

Advertising is also expensive. Putting a product on TV, in magazines, or even on a racecar costs millions of dollars. Handing out notepads and ink pens to doctors is expensive too. Recovering the massive development cost requires incurring massive marketing costs, and of course, those costs are passed along to the patients.

Liability

There are few products more subject to tort activity than pain-relief pharmaceuticals. The potential for problems is high when you consider side effects, drug allergies, and the risk of impairment leading to accidents or crimes. Pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money on legal representation, insurance, and paying out settlements, and like everything else, they recover it through prices.

Copyright law is significant as well. New drug ingredients are intellectual property, and it is very common for less-reputable companies to hijack the chemistry of a copyrighted product and sell it under their own name. This undermines the product’s reputation and potentially endangers patients. This area will remain an issue as long as opioid addiction is so widespread.

There are some types of pain that will always require medication for treatment, and there are many drugs that are very affordable. But when the price tag is too much for ordinary consumers, they can often receive good treatment from all-natural treatments like CBD oils. These products are derived from natural substances that are known to be safe, and they are priced low enough that ordinary consumers can actually afford to continue using them for as long as their pain persists. Natural remedies represent a very strong alternative to costly pharmaceuticals.