Why are my meds so expensive?

It is going to take us three installments of First Aid Kit, but you are going to have so many resources. This time: We’ve got a jingle to help you keep track of all your options.

Advanced material: A pharma rep breaks cover to share a secret recipe. While you fight your insurance company for access, ask your doc for samples.

Meet the 340b program. Oh, boy.

Everyone has to find their own ways through the labyrinth. One dad’s story shows the kind of persistence and creativity it takes to slog through the trial and error process.

We hear from people who do this for a living. A pharma sales rep breaks ranks to reveal a potential game-changer. A former EMT turned patient advocate unveils vital, often overlooked, resources like patient assistance programs, offering practical guidance for navigating a system designed to confuse. And we expose the surprising power and inherent contradictions of the 340B government program.

A half-dozen strategies that are worth a shot, from GoodRx to ordering from online pharmacies in Canada.

None of them are guaranteed to work for you, but they’re absolutely worth knowing about.

Q: Who decides how much your meds will cost you?
A: Pharmacy benefit managers — PBMs for short — are middleman companies that hook into your insurance plan. They make their money.

Finding this stuff hard? You’re not alone. Two very-savvy journalists share their own struggles to get their meds at prices they can afford — and some valuable lessons.

Pharma and insurance companies play devious, clever games, competing for dollars.
They’re sharks! It’d be fun to watch, if they weren’t eating us alive.
But knowing the rules of their games can help.

This write-up doesn’t cover as many strategies, but it has more details, including background on why things cost us so much.

The researchers who discovered insulin — more than 100 years ago — didn’t even want to patent this life-saving medicine. How did it become so notoriously expensive?

The bestselling author and YouTube star rallied his online community around a fight over drug patents and prices — and a pharma giant blinked.

The story reveals a lot about why drugs cost so much, in the U.S. and worldwide.

Part two of this story reaches across more than 20 years and multiple continents — and reveals why global activists have turned their attention to the U.S. patent system itself. Their fight and ours are the same.

How one drug got its $500,000 price tag. The answer involves a suburban housewife, a 1970s TV star, and a Las Vegas maker of popcorn and nacho cheese sauce. Also: Wall Street. Produced with our friends at 99 Percent Invisible.