on the cost of the antivenin, the hospital also has to take into consideration all the antivenin it has purchased in the past that they had to toss out cause of passed its expiration date.....plus $750 sounds WAY low for CroFab, thats prolly for stuff near its expiration date....it should be closer to $2,000 for new production....
I work in an ER and this is spot on. It's not just the cost of buying one shipment of the Crofab but also the fact that the stuff expires pretty rapidly and the hospital has to constantly replace it. So you aren't just paying for what it costs to obtain that one bottle of Crofab but what it costs the hospital to maintain a supply of it at all times.
Sucks but there it is. And I can promise you this, the level of anger over the price would pale in comparison to the level of anger if you had to tell a parent who had just brought in a bitten child. "Sorry we are all out of what we need to treat this but we will order some and hope your child can hang on till it gets here". "You know we used to keep this stuff on hand 24/7 but people bitched too much about the cost". Want to have that conversation with an ER doctor? I doubt it.
Oh, and I also call BS on finding Crofab for 750 bucks. It is typically 2000 a vial.
