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Comment by conorh | Hacker News Reader

I hope this produces some useful anti-venom that is cheaper and widely available. My kid was stung by a small bark scorpion on his thumb here in Arizona and I would not wish that experience on anyone. For hours afterwards he was in excruciating screaming pain, and he even lost his vision for while. That lasted about 24 hours and then it took weeks for him to recover feeling in his hand. Nothing seemed to help with the pain and there was very little we could do for him. I would love to have had a more available anti-venom, but apparently now it is so expensive they only keep it around for the very worst cases.

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I guess if you want good health care at an affordable cost you should have gone to Mexico where the anti-venom that is $10,000 a vial in the US is sold (by the same company) for $100 a vial.

It's only $100 in Mexico because the company can charge $10000 in the US. Not by some inherent virtue of the Mexican system. If the US forced costs down they'd rise everywhere else.

The US subsidizes the rest of the world in Medicine, Defense, Technology, etc...

Is the 10K price in the US due to ongoing costs, recouping R&D, paying for marketing? Because if it's not a real ongoing cost then it's just "wha'tcha got?" pricing.

I doubt they sell it so cheap in Mexico to be charitable. Which suggests they're just soaking the US market.

The lies Americans tell themselves to support their own exploitation will always amaze me.

"The reason we don't provide free healthcare to our citizens is because we have decided to provide 99% discounts for the rest of the planet instead."

Next they will tell you that they have so many homeless people because they are sending all their houses to Mexico.

This could be simply fixed by the US allowing the re-importation of drugs. Without it, we end up with monopolistic pricing.

note that this would be extremely bad for the poorer country that is currently able to purchase medicine, and would probably results in net worse health outcomes globally.

the free market is just not the correct way to set drug prices, and never has been.

Thanks to the magic of Google, I've learned that Mexican scorpion antivenom was in fact developed in Mexico, by a Mexican company, and now you did too.

https://synapse.patsnap.com/article/what-is-serum-antiscorpi...

I wonder how you justify the cost of insulin.

I don't think it's rational to believe that big pharma is giving charity to Mexico. It's $100 a vial in Mexico because that's the optimal price to sell it in Mexico to maximize profit, not because it's subsidized by unregulated price-gouging in the United States.

Does Mexico have a free market for medicine?

Why would that matter? The drug company will price their product to maximize profit in whatever regulatory regime they're selling in. (I have no idea).

Not true. Companies charge the maximum they can rationally charge in each country.

In the US, they can charge whatever they want because the system is broken, and the influence of money on politics means that it doesn’t get fixed.

> but apparently now it is so expensive

They saw Shkreli hike prices 100x and decided that was the business model for them. Same thing has happened with rabies.

A single shot of rabies costs about ~$3 in Asian countries where street dogs are common. It’s crazy how expensive post exposure rabies treatment is in the US.

In Asian countries, people needing treatment is an opportunity to improve lives. In the US, people needing treatment is an opportunity for someone to make bank.

Pretty sure most of the post-exposure (PEP) cost is from the immunoglobulin, which is also why antivenom is often so expensive because it is also often immunoglobulin based. A synthetic alternative to immunoglobulin should bring the price down and make it easier to store/transport.

Pre-exposure (PrEP) for rabies (a vaccine) is more expensive than it should be due to lack of economics of scale and the typical American medical pricing inflation. That's not unique to rabies, it's just how vaccines are allowed to be priced in the US.

My understanding is poorer rabies prone countries do not even attempt PEP for rabies due to the cost, they really rely on broad PrEP immunity.

PEP is always going to be more expensive than PrEP, because transplanting a vaccinated animal's immune response proteins is a much harder thing to do than getting your body to make it's own.

Unfortunately, available does not mean cheap these days. Parents (good ones anyway) would go into a decade of debt to prevent their child from having an experience like you just described. Drug giants see that as a business opportunity.

Vision involvement should have qualified your son for antivenom. Sounds like good ol' US healthcare fuck up, again. Every time.

This might be a job for fentanyl. Carefully monitored in a hospital setting of course.

Leave it to the internet to come up with a new application for a recreational drug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl

Approved for medical use in 1968

Fentanyl is widely used in surgery

Had to get fentanyl during a gall bladder issue, only thing that stopped the screaming

My paramedic colleagues were using fentanyl decades before you heard of it in a recreational context.

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