[discardorama]

FTA: "While a single dose of ketamine is cheaper than a $2 bottle of water, the cost to the consumer varies wildly, running anywhere between $500 and $1,500 per treatment."

Sigh.... why? Why must we turn any opportunity into a money grab?

[refurb]

That seems like a silly statement. Treating a patient with a dose of ketamine includes a lot more costs than just the drug.

If a patient comes in and gets an infusion of ketamine, even if the procedure only takes 1 hr (infuse and observe), you need to pay for the building, the nurse, the physician, all the backroom staff, etc.

Hell, I go into my primary care doctor for an annual physician and it costs ~$200. I see the doctor for maybe 5 minutes and a nurse for maybe another 5 min.

It's like saying "the cost of a bottle of coke is only $0.20, and it's such a shame that it costs me $1.50 at a gas station".

[mc808]

A bottle of Coke would be even more than $1.50 if you were legally required to pay a team of upper middle class salaried attendants to sit you in a very expensive chair in a very expensive building and hand-feed it to you. Don't get me wrong, that is how I would like to enjoy a Coke now and then, but it's good to have less luxurious options available at a lower price.

[rudolf0]

I agree with you. There needs to be something like insulin autoinjector pens, but for ketamine.

This increases the chances of abuse, but ensuring a prescription only lasts 6 doses or whatever would reduce that.

Hopefully once drug laws become a bit more relaxed, this will be seen as acceptable.

[maxerickson]

It also includes the costs for people that don't pay (less of a thing at a clinic than a hospital) and probably some costs associated with Medicare and Medicaid (of course only if they reimburse below the actual cost).

It'd be cool if the bill explicitly listed the actual costs separately from the implicit taxes (hospitals must provide stabilizing treatment, they don't get direct reimbursements for it, this is effectively a tax).

[Bud]

We need not. We can fix this in a stroke of the pen with single-payer. Unlikely, but not impossible.

[merrywhether]

I'm sure that some of the treatment cost involved the doctor's time as well. And unless single-payer means that patient's sign away their ability to make liability claims, that is also a huge part of any anesthetic-like procedure cost.