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Part5 2 of "socialized medicine sucks"... I just bought 90 pills 1mg of melatonin (here it is prescription only).. it will take a week for them to "make" it and cost me $150 dollars to buy it. Would cost me about $10 over the counter int he usa.
@freemo Look at the overall cost. How much did the appointment to get the prescription cost you? I just had to pay $25 for a medication that used to cost $5 and that was on top of a $25 dr visit co-pay and the $350 per month I have to pay for my health insurance (My employer pays the other $350 per month). It essentially cost me $400 for a generic, been-on-the-market-forever low-cost medication.
It sounds like the Israeli system treats melatonin as a compounded drug, which most US insurance won't cover either.
My husband had to have a compounded medicated lotion for diabetic neuropathy. $80 US per tube and it took a week to compound. It wasn't covered by Medicare nor his veteran's benefits. Conservatives in the US consider both these programs as "socialist medicine" and have been floating trial balloons about sunset-ing these programs. With all the chronic health problems he has, we'd be bankrupt in months.
@Dimestorehalo The cost for the appointment was $133, The prescriptions cost me$172 here.
In use a doctors appointment ifor me is $50 (sometimes $25) and my prescriptions under $30.
That said there is a lot of caveats that mean I wouldnt be comparing the costs here without considering the caveats,which are real issues but the cost isnt the whole picture.
No melatonin is actually pre-packaged at 2mg. My doctor prescribed 1mg however and thus required compounding in this case. If i had the 2mg one I would have gotten it immediately and it would have cost me about $40.