Terminally ill patients who chose to end their lives with doctor-prescribed drugs paid $200 for the medication a few years ago, according to an Oregon doctor.
Now, those who want access to the pills will need $3,000.
The price of the medication Seconal has been going up in recent years. A month after the Right-to-Die bill was introduced in California, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the drug, doubled its price.
“I don’t understand any rational way that this medicine costs $3,000,” Dr. David Grube, a family physician in Oregon, where aid in dying is legal, said. “This makes me feel very cynical about the whole thing.”
Seconal is a sedative but Dr. Grube says it is not used as a sleeping aid ‘as much or at all anymore’ because when combined with alcohol or in high doses it can be fatal.
Instead, he said doctors in Oregon prescribe 100 pills of the drug to terminally ill patients who choose to end their lives because it is “compassionate and very gentle.”
In a statement, Valeant told ABC10 “the price increase for the drug occurred shortly after Valeant acquired it, and months before California’s assisted suicide law passed. The suggestion that Valeant raised the price to take advantage of a law that had not yet passed, for a use for which the drug is not even indicated, defies common sense.”
Dr. Grube said he thinks the real question is how much it costs Valeant to make the drug.
“Why don’t you sell it for double or triple?” he said.
MediCal will cover the cost of the life ending drugs for low income patients, with tax payer money.
Private health insurance companies are still looking into whether they will pick up the tab, according to the California Association of Health Plans.
Dr. Michael Amster is a pain specialist in Fairfield, CA. who treats patients in palliative care.
"It is morally reprehensible to take advantage of people who need this medication to end suffering at the end of their lives," Dr. Amster said.