Opinion: Same insulin, different prices — no wonder healthcare is so expensive

To the editor: For diabetics, it pays to shop around. I give myself insulin injections twice a day. Before Medicare, I paid for the insulin out of my pocket. (“Soaring insulin prices are a case in point: A ‘free market’ in healthcare is doomed,” Dec. 20)

Shopping around for the best price is an effort in futility and a lesson in upside-down logic. I can purchase my insulin over the counter at Wal-Mart for $25 a vial. Yet, when I go to other drugstores, I’m in for some serious sticker shock. Costco charges about $100 for the same vial; I’ve seen prices as high as $128.

I’m glad Medicare picks up the price of my medications, but it is still troubling when I think the taxpayers are paying the outlandish prices for something I could have bought at Wal-Mart for $25. Taxpayers would get a tremendous break if the government organized its purchasing efforts and was charged the cheapest market price for the same product.

Rob Macfarlane, Newport Beach

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To the editor: Thanks to David Lazarus for his coverage of this important topic. No rational human who relies on a medicine to stay alive would agree with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) about “unleashing the power of choice” as a way to keep costs down.

But we all know what unleashing the power of greed does.

Christina Hosmer, Laguna Niguel

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