r/technology • u/cmaia1503 • Feb 11 '25

Social Media UnitedHealth hired a defamation law firm to go after social media posts criticizing the company

https://fortune.com/2025/02/10/unitedhealth-defamation-law-firm-social-media/
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444

u/philipjefferson Feb 11 '25

For what it's worth, they're expensive in Canada too. I think the way they need to be shipped, maintained and cooled just leads to them being expensive...

518

u/MeowCatPlzMeowBack Feb 11 '25

Very short sighted of me to get the expensive™️ disease, the medication is literally too rich for my blood.

Even my immune system hates the poor(me) 😭

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u/die_anna Feb 11 '25

Still insane to me that the pharmaceutical industry is for profit. Like imagine profiting over the misfortune of others. Humanity is doomed if we ever get invaded by aliens.

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u/SomethingLikeLove Feb 11 '25

No need for Aliens, mate.

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u/crackheadwillie Feb 11 '25

Agreed. We're already doomed. We already have dumb AF voters.

1

u/FaceShanker Feb 12 '25

As President Musk demonstrates, your vote is basically worthless when an oligarch can buy the guy you voted for.

For a real and meaningful democracy, everyone needs to get massivly more active than just popping a ballot in a box once every 4 years.

(also, beware the big dramatic protest, Project 2025 basically mentions planning to tiananmen square those)

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u/SeenSawConquered Feb 12 '25

Like yourself?

13

u/spark3h Feb 11 '25

At this point, an alien invasion is aspirational.

"You mean we might get advanced healthcare and fusion reactors but we'd have to join their alien empire? Oh, the alien empire has a universal basic income?"

1

u/No-Affect-9893 Feb 12 '25

Hell I'd take Star Trek at this point screw money. I'm not sure how dependent an alien race would be on the barter system.

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u/Alternative_Delay899 Feb 11 '25

hey, we need immigrants here, come on. sorryjusthadtodoit

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u/croquetica Feb 11 '25

My meds cost $11k a month. I don't feel worth that amount, so thanks for that mentality too, UHC.

37

u/Obant Feb 11 '25

Same, my UC meds are $12k a month, well, they were until Medicare decided to deny them and force me on to a similar generic that isn't as effective.

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u/croquetica Feb 11 '25

I've already been warned by my GI that this might happen to me this year. Meanwhile, abbvie continues to be the most profitable drug company on earth. The whole system is a scam.

1

u/ilikedota5 Feb 12 '25

There is actually a difference between name brand and generic for the same drug? Or by similar generic you man an older medication with the expired patent that has a generic version?

0

u/Tickwit Feb 11 '25

Isn’t it that a myth started by pharmaceutical companies that generics are less effective?

4

u/Obant Feb 12 '25

Some generics are different medicines and deliver the dosage in a different way.

3

u/aray25 Feb 11 '25

Yes and no. There's some placebo effect at play.

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u/Catch22Crow Feb 11 '25

11k-ish here too. With no biosimilar, since mine is a human blood product.

A UHC rep once told me that people like me were “an albatross around the neck of healthcare costs” while I was on the phone trying to fix THEIR fucking mistake. I told her “Oh I’m sorry, why don’t you go bitch at my entire family lineage one by one then, because I didn’t ask to have this. I’d lend you a shovel to dig them up, but seems like you’ve already got one and you’re good at digging yourself a hole.”

Glad I’m no longer with them.

5

u/gymnastgrrl Feb 11 '25

I'm on dialysis. The purported "retail" price of each of my treatments, which are three hours three times per week, is slightly over $9,000.

My insurance actually purports to pay a little over $900. Which means that just that costs well over $100,000 to keep me alive. Although they claim that it "should" cost over $1,000,000....

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u/Vvardenfells_Finest Feb 11 '25

It’s the entire medical system here in the USA. Ever watch The Resident? It’s obviously exaggerated for entertainment but hospitals are there for profit. I’d like to think in the real world it doesn’t work like it does in the show but man there is some fucked up stuff going on.

4

u/_jolly_cooperation_ Feb 11 '25

Maybe the aliens will save us

3

u/wildmonster91 Feb 11 '25

Only if they have mastered the atom something like startreks replicators. Then we could solve it. But theres a snip from a show called the orvell where if it was given to us at this stage someone would keep it and seel whatever was produced. Humans are selfish in nature. Tribalistic and rather barbaric...

4

u/Commercial-Tell-2509 Feb 11 '25

Just here me out… let churches profit… they take over and in a few hundred years through enlightenment we will get freedom and can try this all over again!

4

u/AssistanceCheap379 Feb 11 '25

Imagine if seatbelts were extra and they were subscription based.

Or if you needed to pay a fee to the FDA in order to know if some ingredient is safe to eat or not and then you have to do that for everything you eat. And if you forget to do it for one ingredient, the entire meal now costs 300% more.

If you wanted to buy any electrics and you were told “it’s guaranteed not to explode on you, but be cautious, it might burst into flames on this plan, which isn’t covered by your current payment. If that happens, your entire house might burn down and since you don’t have firefighters insurance, we might as well just stop by and watch together. For a fee of course”

It’s a subscription based services for something vital and if your body fails, it goes up. Like if you began watching more Netflix, would Netflix expect you to pay a premium because you’re using more of their resources?

4

u/Takkarro Feb 11 '25

Arms dealers been doing that for ever. Sucks that so many big power and rich trades are basicly screw everyone else to make the most profit for the losers up top that probably never worked a day in their lives.

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u/hughk Feb 11 '25

The pharmaceutical industry has to pay for drug development but they usually pick up drugs as they hit clinical trials. The first stage is paid by research grants, often from entities like the NIH. There is a lot of early stage research that end up unsuccessful, yes your taxes pay for that.

Forget about the UK with its 'commie' NHS (which also funds drug development) and look at more commercial Germany. They also have much cheaper drugs.

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u/One_Rough5369 Feb 11 '25

All over the world our leaders are working hard to commodify every aspect of our lives.

Here in Canada we are seeing a big surge in nationalism in response to Trump. Our billionaires must be deliriously happy right now.

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u/liquidphantom Feb 11 '25

More profitable to treat and manage rather than cure.

2

u/True-Record-9358 Feb 11 '25

That's a pretty reductive view. I would argue that the majority of all economic activity is driven by alleviating misfortune. The main reason pharmaceuticals are expensive is that they're protected from competition by both patents and the FDA. If it weren't for these two huge barriers to industry, the price of drugs would be subject to market forces much like any other product and prices would come down.

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u/Curtlawyer Feb 11 '25

Man I'm praying we get invaded by aliens. It's our only hope.

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u/firemage22 Feb 12 '25

what pisses me off is so much research is done at publicly funded unis, with public grants.

2

u/thelastundead1 Feb 12 '25

Imagine trusting those same companies to be responsible for curing a disease when that would prevent repeat business. Treating a disease is way more profitable than curing.

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u/INEEDSRSHELP Feb 11 '25

If medicine was not profitable we wouldn’t have the advancements we’ve had

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u/EmuArtistic6499 Feb 11 '25

Will the aliens like those of us that have a universal healthcare system outside of America?

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '25

Eh, I think we're interesting enough that aliens would contain our planet in a zoo.

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u/Ashamed-Addition-431 Feb 11 '25

The way things are now? What could Aliens do that would be worse? Anything capable of visiting us taking over might be a huge improvement.

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u/SilverShibe Feb 11 '25

Until we can change human nature to want to do the work to develop medications for the betterment of humanity instead of profit, you have to choose between letting them profit or having people who could have been saved die because new drugs weren’t developed at all.

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u/The_Doolinator Feb 12 '25

The Visitors gonna drop by, be all like “shit, they’re already pulling our schtick of alienating scientists and cracking down on speaking out against authorities. These assholes have already done 80% of the work for us!”

1

u/bilibass Feb 12 '25

Shit, aliens might help

1

u/corv1991 Feb 12 '25

Aliens don't need to glass the planet. America will be in 3 to 4 conflicts before Christmas at this rate

1

u/Slytherin23 Feb 12 '25

That's the only reason those medications exist. If there was no profit they just wouldn't have invented them.

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u/TransitionOk998 Feb 12 '25

I would welcome the Emperor glassing the entire surface

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u/Adventurous-Buy8787 Feb 12 '25

You mean like the funeral industry? 🙄

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u/Buffnick Feb 13 '25

We treat everything though, that’s the advantage and disadvantage.

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u/TheWinterKnight13 Feb 11 '25

Ahhh, the good old $100,000 injected directly into the blood stream cure!

2

u/muiirinn Feb 11 '25

I feel you. I'm on both a biologic for HS and an enzyme replacement therapy drug for a rare genetic disease. Without insurance, the former is several thousand a month, the latter is about $300,000 a month for the rest of my life 🙃 The only upside is I always meet my out of pocket maximum like, a few days into each new year, and it's essentially paid by the pharmaceutical company's patient assistance program because that applies before it ever gets billed to me. Otherwise I'd be shit out of luck and breaking even more bones than I already am 😭

I love her to death and we only found out we both have this genetic disease because of me getting tested but for the sake of reliving my moody teen years, thanks, mom.

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u/Diestormlie Feb 11 '25

If your Immune Disease hates the poor, does that make Autoimmune Diseases Comrades?

3

u/intelminer Feb 11 '25

Crayon eaters: Selfishness is human nature!

Individual cells literally working together to form complex multi-cellular organisms: [big thonk]

1

u/BilboTBagginz Feb 11 '25

Have you ever looked into whether the manufacturer provides a subsidy card? I take Xeljanz, which is around $2500/month but Pfizer pays for whatever my insurance doesn't. So with a high deductible health care plan, I pay nothing.

We just got switched to UHC too.

1

u/kingky0te Feb 11 '25

Reminds me of the movie In Time. Crazy.

1

u/occarune1 Feb 11 '25

Try having Luekemia, the pills I have to take every day are 26,000 dollars a month.

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u/warm_kitchenette Feb 11 '25

Research who makes the drugs that you need. Check to see if they have a patient assistance program that could lower the cost. I know these programs exist (a friend is trying to use one) but I don't know how difficult it is (hasn't worked so far for them).

There may also be a way to get reduced cost by joining a research project on that drug, or forthcoming drugs in the same class. There are sites to announce these.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '25

Have you tried not being poor?

1

u/Zippier92 Feb 11 '25

Why not just be a billionaire /s??

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u/thebeginingisnear Feb 12 '25

Bad blood, but good joke

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '25

Some things at least make more sense to be more expensive, but not nearly as expensive as they are. Like why can’t we just have a legitimately fair price based on how hard it is to make something?

But also the whole drug approval process literally cost $1 billion minimum so I don’t even really know what could be done. Maybe after they recoup that money you could force them to lower prices but then they might not try to develop drugs in the first place, if they don’t think they’re gonna make crazy money off of it

Anyways I’m rambling

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u/aidsman69420 Feb 11 '25

In a less developed society, the billions of dollars that drugs cost to develop could be considered an unfortunate fact that we just have to accept as the reason medicines can be so expensive. The thing is that governments (thinking of the U.S. in particular) spend even more billions on things we don’t need, e.g. the notorious military budget. Theoretically we have a lot of extra money that could be used to subsidize scientific research which is already done to some extent.

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u/pumpkinspruce Feb 11 '25

Manufacturing biologics is expensive in general because they come from things like animal cells or microorganisms. They’re not like Tylenol which has a clear chemical formula and structure and can easily be replicated as a generic.

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u/LifeFortune7 Feb 11 '25

There are a ton of Chinese and Indian companies that can manufacture pills for the generic market. Manufacturing biologics is a HUGE step up. That is why you see large pharma companies who make their money on patented products getting into the biosimilar market- because only so many companies worldwide have the ability to make those drugs. That is why biosimilars are not as much of a cost savings vs generic pills- difficulty of manufacturing is expensive and therefore there aren’t nearly as many competitors in the space. (Work for one of those huge pharma companies).

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u/ChrisV88 Feb 12 '25

That's not true, because I get two medications by mail that are packaged in the same FedEx overnight box with icepacks. One is 199 and one is 6300.

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u/eekwhatamidoing57 Feb 12 '25

Yep, between 2000 and 4000 a month for a psoriasis biologic called cosentyx. Insurance pays, then when that 10k cap is hit, the company provides compassionate dosing. The Ontario govt has also covered a portion in the past.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '25

Also because billionaire Mark Cuban owns and runs the site, did people think this business was going to be a charity working for the public good?

He's just selling slightly cheaper drugs to gain market share from his competitors, once he has enough market share to dominate, those prices will go right back to where his competitors had them, or even higher, if he thinks he can get away with it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '25

[deleted]

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u/philipjefferson Feb 11 '25

I have no idea what that means tbh. I take Skyrizi and I can't remember the price since my work health plan covers it. But I remember it was going to be at least like 15k a year CAD.

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u/jeepfail Feb 11 '25

Shouldn’t an auto injector always be more expensive?

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u/FinancialAlbatross92 Feb 11 '25

I work for a PSP and our UC/CD Med is 3700 an infusion.

Edit: It is around 24K - 40K a year depending on regiment.