Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, but I have to nitpick on the AARP graph showing the average annual rate of price increases for 227 drugs.

Anytime I see data that is a subset of the real data set, I have to wonder why they did that. Why not the average annual rate of price increases over all prescription drugs? Why only 227 of them?

Also, I disagree with this quote: "Only when a 46 percent discount was applied to a pricy Hepatitis C treatment, Harvoni, did it become a good health care value -- at about $40,000 per year."

That's patently untrue. Hell, CTAF (California technology assessment forum, which assessed drugs for MediCal) found that Harvoni, at it's full price of almost $90K was cost effective. The real problem is that it would cost too much to treat everyone.

The drugs were chosen simply as the most significant ones for the AARP's membership. The methodology is thoroughly discussed in Appendix A of the study:

http://member.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/2014-11/rx-price...

Also note that the drugs were chosen before they started tracking prices.

I totally understand your skepticism, but rather than just wonder why they chose those, why not find out?

They did find out. Why go digging when you could just make a comment and get all the work done for you.

That's the internet for you. Ask a question and nobody answers, state the wrong answer and you get the right answer instantly. It's not my fault, I'm a victim of an oppressive system!

Cunningham's Law: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

Haha.. good job calling me out!

You are correct, I could have done some background reading before my "drive by" post.

Lesson learned!

Cheers!

To be fair, I really wish news organizations would do a better job of linking to their sources. In this case, you have to notice a link in the story, then dig up the link to the actual study from that. There really should be a direct link to the study from the chart's caption, made obvious for all to see.

Of course, one could click through the link to the study, and read the 3 pages that describe the methodology behind their "market basket" of drugs. You don't have to wonder, or at least the curious don't.

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