Being intentionally nonspecific here, for Reasons.
Someone I know, who's been among the uninsured (not merely no comprehensive health plan, but no insurance of any sort, and... well, how things got this way is Complicated, but the process seems to have involved Obamacare dropping the "Portability" part of HIPAA immediately after passage, thereby adding to the pool of uninsured) for some time now, is taking one of those "one a day for the rest of your life" maintenance drugs.
It's pricey. The name-brand product, if memory serves, had gone from around $100/month to $150/month over the last couple of years. Fortunately, there's a generic now, at a still-outlandish $70/month.
And, now that there's a generic, does competition bring down the price of the name brand? It does not. The name brand now goes for well over $200/month.
Presumably this is because, as with so many other prescription drugs, no one actually pays list price. Someone Else pays, and that Someone Else has negotiated a secret 90% discount.
But a huge jump in price, after competition enters? Gotta be some other factor. Like, perhaps, this is one of those categories of drugs that health plans are now required to cover 100%, with no substituting generics? Another of those fine provisions added to Obamacare at the behest of Big Pharma?
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