The High Cost of Drugs is Underlined by the Drug Eliquis

   The drug I bought today, Eliquis, which is a blood thinner, cost $500. After both Medicare and my supplemental insurance pitched in, I was left to pay only $25.
   The point is, we as a nation still haven't solved the high price of drugs. Someone paid the rest of the $500, even though I was spared. How to correct the high price of medicine? There would seem to be two ways to do it, and we should pick one of the two paths and go down it. One, allow competition. Two, put a cap on the price; establish that a month's supply of no drug shall be more than, say, $100.
   Eliquis was a joint venture between Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and Pfizer. It is such a profitable venture for BMS that in late 2019, it accounted for 30 percent of BMS's quarterly sales.
   But, here's an interesting and perhaps telling tidbit I just learned on Wikipedia: In December, the FDA approved a generic version, which is produced jointly by Mylan an Micro Labs. This means my doctor probably knowingly prescribed Eliquis to me knowing that a generic version would save a mass amount of money. Bottom line: Our medical providers may be knowingly directing us to the expensive drugs to serve the pharmaceutical makers. We should ask why? Are the pharmaceutical companies providing them kickbacks? Perhaps not, but we should definitely be asking that question. Whatever the reason doctors are still prescribing the BMS-Pfizer drug over the Mylan-Micro Labs version needs to be uncovered.