How Expensive Can OTC Medicine Be?

While recently killing time in a local Wal*Mart store.   I happened by a middle of the aisle display for abreva.  (A cold sore medicine).  I remember we once used a product called campo-pehnique,  (sorry if I misspelled that),  which cam in a small bottle and worked just fine.  As I remember it cost just a little more than a stick of chap stick. I was really shocked to see a “discounted on sale” price of $15.12 for a little tube containing .07 oz.  I ‘m sure it is a very good product,  but come on….$15.12 for 7 hundredths of an ounce.   Talk about the price of bottle water being high at about 89 cents (in our area) for a 20 oz bottle.  Think gas is high at $3.79 9/10 a gallon. Let’s look at this abreva cost.  As you know I am not very good at math so this is just as an example.  I think it takes 700 of these tubes to make a full ounce,  If I am wrong you can do the following computation with the correct number.    Take the sale price, $15.12 per .07 oz  X 700 =$10,584.00 an ounce.  Note abreva is sold I believe by net wt.  So comparing to water or gas we would have to figure the net weight for an ounce of either.  For example we know FLUID oz is a measure of volume, and net wt oz is a measure a measure of WEIGHT.  The ounce is still an ounce, it takes 16 oz to make a pound.  A gallon of water weighs approximately 8.34 pounds.  So we are now comparing weight to weight.  This means 133.44 oz to a gallon.  Now take the $10,584.oo an ounce for abreva, times th3 133.44 oz in a gallon of water.  Guess what that would bring the cost of of a gallon of water to $141,232,8.96.oo. A 20 oz bottle of water would cost $11,769.41.  So who can complain about 89 cents for a 20 oz bottle of water?  It is but a drop in the bucket.  If you want to figure this for gasoline.  Gasoline varies from about 5-6 pounds, so for  our sake here we will use the more prominent estimate of 6 pounds per gallon. means about 96 ounces.  96 ounces times $10,584.oo = (appx)  $1,016,064.oo So I ask you is abreva really worth the price you pay? I suppose the answer is yes, if it does what you want of it.  But comparatively It appears to me to be WAAAY overpriced. That Is How I See It.     more than Post Views: 134