Sticker shock: Prescription drug prices in the US vs the world

By Radhika Rukmangadhan

When I set out to move to the US for grad school, friends and family cautioned me about the exorbitant costs associated with healthcare and prescription medications in the U.S.
But getting through the Fall semester was hard. I had to up my coffee intake to survive.
Although this helped me get my assignments done on time, it also resulted in me developing GERD - Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. It is a chronic digestive disorder where stomach acid flows back into the esophagus, causing irritation and inflammation.
I was asked to take Omeprazole – a commonly prescribed medicine to treat acid reflux. With insurance, I paid around $9 for 30 capsules at the CVS near campus; without insurance it would have cost me around $60. On the orange pill bottle that the pharmacist handed to me was a familiar name – Dr Reddy’s Lab.
Dr Reddy’s is an Indian pharmaceutical company from South India, where I grew up. Back home, the same medication, made by the same manufacturer, would have cost me, without insurance, a whopping 80 cents ($1= ₹83).
So, for this project, I decided to explore how much more expensive in prescription medication in the US than in India and other parts of the world.
According to a study done by the American Pharmaceutical Review, prices for commonly prescribed drugs are a fraction of the price in India, compared to the rates charged in the US.

Omeprazole, the same drug that was prescribed to me, on average costs 50 cents per tablet in the US, an eye-watering 1,150 percent markup from the price I would have paid in India.
Haters will say that you cannot compare US drug prices with prices in developing country like India where drugs need to be subsidized to be affordable.
So, let’s look at “comparable” OECD countries, which are fully developed and have similar standards of living.
The International Federation of Health Plans (iFHP) compared the median prices paid by a sample of private health insurance companies for specific health care services in nine countries. The report found that median prices paid by private insurance for health care services in the United States was almost always higher than the median prices in the eight other countries included in the iFHP study.
Click through the slideshow below to see how much more expensive prescription drugs are in the US.