A couple of things are known about ivermectin, the anti-parasitic treatment being promoted by a clutch of conspiracy-mongering mountebanks as a COVID-19 treatment.
First,
it doesn't work on COVID. Second, despite that fact, prescriptions for the drug have rocketed higher — from 3,600 a week pre-pandemic to
88,000 in one sample week in mid-August, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Third, the publicizing of ivermectin by anti-vaccine and anti-government activists
duped naïve people to take a veterinary preparation of the drug, producing a spike in calls to poison control centers.
Kao-Ping Chua, University of Michigan
Now, thanks to researchers at the University of Michigan and Boston University, we also know the financial toll of the ivermectin craze. In
a research letter published Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., they estimated that Medicare and private insurers wasted an estimated $130 million last year on ivermectin prescriptions for COVID..........
The researchers' estimate may even be low for two main reasons. One is that their estimate is based on spending by private insurers and Medicare, but not Medicaid, which also covers the drug.
Second, they arrived at their figure by extrapolating from that one week highlighted by the CDC, when the average of new cases in the U.S. was running at about 150,000 a day. On Jan. 12, the daily average of new cases was more than 782,000. If ivermectin claims are tracking new cases, Chua says, then they may be getting filled at more than five times as often as last August.
Finally, consider the indirect cost. "By decreasing financial barriers to ivermectin, insurers are essentially facilitating access to a drug that some people use as a substitute for COVID vaccination," Chua observes. "In that sense, they could be raising their own costs for COVID complications."...........
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/ins...ivermectin-stupidity/ar-AASNasJ?ocid=msedgntp