My wife risks blindness without her glaucoma medication. A month’s supply is 3 ml. That’s barely enough to fill a thimble. It was priced at nearly $300.
On vacation recently, she bought the same 3-ml of medication from a Parisian pharmacy for 11 Euros (about $11.50). We walked in, presented an outdated prescription from the United States, the pharmacist asked some questions to clarify and confirm, and we walked out with two months’ worth of the vision-saving liquid.
My wife and I have the financial wherewithal to afford expensive medications. We have the technological knowhow to search for and print coupons, so we typically don’t pay the full asking price. And we can travel to places where medications are sold for reasonable prices.
We worry, however, about people of lesser means and the people who don’t have the technical knowhow to chase price reductions. We worry about the others who must pay unreasonable prices for their essential prescription medications.