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Comment by lowdose | Hacker News Reader

A woman that uses the pill as birth control consumes 0.00365 gram of estrogen a year. At a consumption price of the pill for $300 a gram of estradiol is thus worth $82,191.79. Compare that to $44 for a gram of gold and you wonder if big Pharma is ready for disruption?

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Estradiol is about $7 for 30 1mg pills, so more like $233 per gram. Source: goodrx.com / I'm a trans woman.

(edit) - and just to reflect on what happened to this child, in addition to the physical changes & social problems, this "treatment" would have surely induced gender dysphoria, which any trans person can tell you is awful as hell.

You’re not factoring in labor, packaging, pharmacy profit, pharmacist wages, insurance company profit. If you think you can do it cheaper, then go for it

Seems like at least two of those could be removed by universal healthcare.

I presume you're talking about pharmacy profit and insurance company profit. "universal healthcare" just means everyone's covered. It doesn't mean everything's owned & operated by the government. That means there can still be private insurance companies and pharmacies, both making a profit.

I would assume they are referring to most of the current suggestions for universal healthcare in the US, which follow a centralised model where a central body could collectively negotiate for drug prices (as the NHS does here in the UK, very effectively).

>which follow a centralised model where a central body could collectively negotiate for drug prices

That's orthogonal to universal healthcare or even a single payer system. There's nothing preventing you from having the whole country be represented collectively, but still have private insurers, like in germany. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2019/how-drug-prices-a...

Sure, that's true. It's not exactly uncommon to conflate a term with the most common/likely implementations known though, which is what I assumed happened here. It is true that universal healthcare could solve those problems, even if it doesn't have to.

The biggest cost dwarfing all of these is probably the research.

But aren't these subsidized with tax payer money?

AFAIK the biggest cost is approval/clinical trials, which aren't typically taxpayer funded. The initial research is in part taxpayer funded, though.

When Florida is importing drugs from Canada instead of buying them domestically then its pretty self-evident that it can be done for cheaper.

Not sure if this is an earnest defense of the state of healthcare costs in the US but you'd have to be deluded if you think that the rampant profit-seeking in the US for healthcare is merely the cost of doing business.

Estradiol is a generic drug and generic drugs tends to be cheaper in the US than Canada[1] and the EU. The US generic drug market is incredibly competitive.

It's brand name drugs that are cheaper in other countries.

[1]https://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/events/en/R&Dpaper2...

There are lots of things more valuable than gold. Why is that a useful comparison?

Basic generic pharmaceuticals should be manufactured by the state, in a non-profit fashion.

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