(And of course by cough medicine I mean something that actually contains an active antitussive ingredient, as opposed to so-called “cough drops” that are really just candy.)
I was just doing an informal survey of OTC meds on the website of the local big box store. To say the least, typical prices vary wildly depending on what you’re looking for.
The generic equivalents of Tylenol and Benadryl cost only a few pennies per dose. Generic Claritin and Zyrtec are a bit more expensive, but still come in under ten cents for a typical adult dose.
Generic drugs for GI problems like diarrhea and gas cost a bit more, but still under 15c per dose.
On the other hand, Robitussin DXM gelcaps, at $6 for a box of 20, come out to 60c for the recommended adult dose. That’s if and when I can find it, which I usually can’t.
And the DXM polistirex suspension (genetic equivalent of Delsym) comes in at 56c a dose. Often, this is the only single ingredient DXM preparation available, but even so I’ve never used it. I prefer not to take anything that contains actual microplastic.
So, why the variation in price? Why does a dose of cough medicine cost nearly 10 times as much as a dose of first generation antihistamine?
TBT it could be as regional thing; when I lived in California I could find 4-ounce bottles of generic DXM syrup at the dollar store, but I’ve never seen anyrhing like that in Oregon.
When someone asks, “Why does XXX cost more than YYY?” the usual response is couched around a (supposed) fact that XXX costs more to produce. The truth is much simpler than that.
The product XXX costs $ZZ.ZZ because that is what people are willing to pay for it. Another way of looking at it is because $ZZ.ZZ is the lowest amount that those who have XXX are willing to accept. It really is that simple.
Of course, if it costs more than $ZZ.ZZ to produce XXX, you won’t find many people willing to sell it for $ZZ.ZZ.
Throat lozenges, cough mixtures and some painkillers are among the over-the-counter medicines in short supply, according to the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies.
The industry group warned of supply issues of both branded and unbranded medicines to treat seasonal illnesses.
The above story is from Great Britain but it seems the same in the US too:
U.S. households are stepping up spending on cough and cold medicines and children’s pain relievers amid a rise in reports of respiratory infections, leading to sporadic shortages of some drugs online and at stores.
Flu infections and hospitalizations are surging across the country, federal data suggests, on top of an already busy season for other respiratory viruses including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. These viruses are common in the fall and winter months, but the sharp, early increases have roiled families and put pressure on children’s hospitals.
Never understood cough drops - especially the ones with menthol and what not. I guess it is not a flavor profile I like.
I always did hot tea with lemon and honey or ginger lemon tea with honey [if I didn’t want the caffeine of black tea] and I use a facial steamer to generate the steam for my sinuses, and I have used neti pot for years [I have noticed, neti poting seems to keep the old 2 to 3 times a winter colds away. ]
Eugene has grass farms in the area (real grass for sod, not marijuana) and is famous for the amount of pollen that floats around in the air. Believe me, people around here would be willing to pay a lot more than four cents per Benadryl tablet, but they’re not being forced to do so.
According to the Wiki article, the polistirex does fully degrade in the stomach, so it’s not like we can liken it to a plastic water bottle that ends up in a landfill.
I don’t like the polistirex version because it’s so thick and viscous it feels like it gets stuck in my throat. Also, I don’t need something that works for twelve hours so that doesn’t justify the price, at least for me.
Those are fine if you’re at home but not at the office or on the road. Coughs tend to linger on past the point where you’re otherwise feeling fine, or they’re sometimes the only symptom, so not much point in staying in bed.
I tend to agree, and I wonder if it’s even really a plastic, or that’s just a quick and easy descriptor? I don’t have the time to look it up at the moment. There’s degradable corn-based plastics out there too.
Your example is flawed in that nobody is forcing anybody to buy Benadryl at any price. It is the consumer who makes the decision to purchase and how much to pay. As long as there are retailers in the area willing to sell it for 4 cents a tablet, those trying to get more find they don’t have many customers.
If you are implying that the manufactures of Benadryl could increase their price to the wholesalers to make a bigger profit, the manufacturers have a sales group (likely called Marketing) whose job it is to determine the price in the marketplace that will result in the highest profit. While the pollen in the air in Eugene probably figures into the calculus, it is already baked into the 4 cents a tablet retail price.
Put another way, the retailers of the product will set the price where they think it’ll generate the most revenue (i.e. the most money). That’s a balancing act between selling a lot at a lower price per unit and selling fewer at a higher price.
Every product has its sweet spot with respect to those factors.
The cost of the product doesn’t have anything at all to do with the price. It’s entirely possible that a product may be dirt cheap to produce, and yet still be priced pretty high. Case in point- beer. Malted barley, water, hops and yeast are pretty cheap all things considered.
So by that, the actual ingredients and production costs make up 24% of the total cost of a six-pack of craft beer. Around $2.50-$3 these days ($2.88 in the HuffPo example) . The rest is profit, marketing, shipping, tax, etc… in particular the distributor and retailer margins make up 52% of the total cost.
And I’d bet they don’t have any visibility into the actual cost of ingredients, etc… past the fact that the brewer has priced their beers at $5.04 per six pack / distributor prices at $7.56 per six-pack. They add their markups based on whatever it is that they’re trying to do in terms of profitability/sales targets/etc…
You do have a good point here. Many people seem to think that the retail price of something necessarily is, or should be, directly proportional to its cost to manufacture. (And, as a corollary, that price is always a reliable guide to quality.). However…
While I agree this is truer, I don’t think it’s simpler. (“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” -Oscar Wilde) It still leaves open the question of why $ZZ.ZZ is the amount that people are willing to pay to buy, or accept to sell, the item. And there may be many factors, including but not limited to manufacturing costs, that influence this.
This is a somewhat different topic. While generic drugs are significantly cheaper than their branded counterparts, generic DXM cough medicine is still far more expensive than generic antihistamines, the only exception I’ve personally experienced being those California dollar store bottles I mentioned.
Not true. If you look at @dougrb 's photo of the supply/demand curve, we see that the price will eventually settle in at the equilibrium point (or near enough).
That equilibrium point is based on market forces, which include the fact that customers are willing to pay X but will always prefer to pay X-something. When something is cheap to produce, suppliers will compete to capture market share by lowering the price, so the price will settle at a lower point than for a product that is expensive to produce.
DXM is 10x the price of Benadryl almost certainly because DXM is more costly to produce and get to the customer.
I’d say that’s pretty accurate because the sicker you are and the more critical the medicine, the higher the cost because people will pay anything to stay alive. … if they have it. Tragically, a significant number of people simply don’t have it, but they are considered “acceptable loses” because enough do have it to make it a very profitable enterprise for the pharmaceuticals.
)