$4 lists versus drug companies, FIGHT!!
I have spoken before here, albeit a long time ago, about how I don't like the practices of drug companies, and find them generally no better than insurance companies. Today, I'm going to discuss a realization I just had, and one thing that I do like about Wal-Mart.
Nearly all of us are aware of the various $4 drug programs... $4 a month, some offer $9.99 for 90 days worth of medication, Publix and, iirc, Meijer offering free antibiotics. Walgreens does not have a strict $4 program, they do have a program called the W Card that you can buy into for $20 a year for an individual and $35 for a family, and it offers similar discounted rates, but you do have to buy into it and it is a pain in the ass to set up, and even worse if you want a refund. (I have personally seen the W Card save people hundreds of dollars, though, so I can't speak too harshly about it. And it will even cover your pets, if they take medication on the list. A list of covered medications is available at your local Walgreens, they just expanded the list. Probably on the website too. Only thing, if you're a Medicare patient, can't use it, Walgreens and Medicare have a deal. Go to another pharmacy for those <3 Ad= over.) Anyway. I can't speak as to what medications are on other companies' $4 lists, but ours are all generic, and I'm betting the lists of other companies are similar.
Contrast this with drug companies. Now, to paint all drug companies with one broad stroke is simplistic and doesn't shed light on why they do what they do, so we can work towards changing it, but that is for another essay. Plainly said, I don't like drug companies. Specifically, I don't like their tactics, a few of which I will outline below:
* Evergreening. Drug companies are known to use techniques such as "evergreening," which is when a drug company will come out with a new drug (or a controlled/extended release format) to replace a drug that just went generic. Nexium is probably the best known example of the former (hi, Prilosec!,) Toprol XL is the best example to me of the latter (Metoprolol is the generic for Toprol.)
* Drug Representatives. Otherwise known as Drug Reps, the scourge of the healthcare industry in my always humble opinion, these people come into play once the drug companies already have their spiffy meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss drug. The drug companies detail them to go out into the field, targeting doctors offices, pharmacies (I actually spoke with a drug rep once. You'll be proud to know I was completely cordial and polite,) individual doctors, individual pharmacists, and doctors and pharmacists to be, and get doctors to prescribe these drugs with happening names, these XR/XL/CR versions of drugs whose perfectly fine previous versions just went generic. You can spot these drugs because they generally come with free 7/30 day coupons that you have to send for and bring to the pharmacy. Pro tip: these drugs aren't always covered by insurance at all, and if they are, it's a pain shoving them through. A quick way of finding out is asking your friendly pharmacy tech to run it through without the coupon first, there's no sense in starting a medication if you won't be able to continue it because your insurance won't pay for it. (Please don't attempt this in drive-thru at 5pm on a first of the month Monday, though. Do it at 2pm on a Wednesday or at night after 8pm if your pharmacy is a 24-hour one, your tech will love you for it.) As a side note, people are always talking about the shit economy these days, and cost-cutting measures, but I ring up thousands of dollars of prescriptions every shift, and one thing I notice is people buying these versions of these drugs with nary a realization that there are generics a lot of the time that would save them a lot of money. Might be worth considering.
* Advertising. At the same times drug companies are sending out drug reps to wine and dine various healthcare-related people and leaving little pens and clocks and shit behind as reminders of their message, they saturate our media... our television shows, our magazines, our newspapers, the websites we visit, with advertisements for these same drugs. Actually, quicker than waiting while the pharmacy tech inputs your prescription and runs it through insurance? Just look to see if your drug has an XR/XL/CR on the end, or if it's one being advertised when they hand you the prescription. If it does, the non controlled/extended release just went generic, which means that if you can get them to write you a script for the generic, you can save yourself a lot of money. Drug companies are certainly not the only ones that do this, but I have a problem with this because I believe advertising medication, thereby making it a very commonplace thing, is turning us into a society of drug users, much more legal than not. By marketing these drugs (by being allowed to market these drugs, she snarls,) they also market the idea that there is a pill that cures whatever ails, whatever ails. And I fervently believe that they are turning us into a nation of hypochondriacs.
Ever notice that whenever we aren't perfectly bouncy and peachy, shiny happy, and if someone asks about it, we usually say something about being depressed? Being sad, in a shitty mood, is not the same as clinical depression. You do not need a pill for that. It is completely normal to not be a shiny happy person all the time. Same for Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, otherwise known as, of course, ADD/ADHD. Note: I am not saying that I don't believe ADD/ADHD is not a valid diagnosis, aiding for Sandberg in high school for 3 years erased all doubt I'll ever have about that. I do think it is overdiagnosed, and sometimes, just sometimes, it isn't the child, it's the environment and society they grow up in. That we have created. We all have trouble focusing sometimes. That does not mean you need a damn pill for it.
In advertising these designer drugs, sending people out to convince doctors to prescribe them, then convincing us we need them, drug companies have created a culture of hypochondria. Message: There is not always a pill to cure what ails. This is because, sometimes, there is nothing wrong in the first place. Don't let them convince you there is.
There are others, of course, but those are the tactics I have the most trouble with.
$4 lists and the like fly directly in the face of all that mess. Generics don't have the breezy designer names, the slim, colorful packaging. All that mess, all the heavy co-pays, are an attempt to recoup the R&D funds and administrative costs it takes to push the drug down the pipeline to us. (Which may beg the question of what is wrong with paying higher co-pays for a drug if it will help to re-coup those costs, which are admittedly significant. The difference to me is that a lot of the drugs you see now, or at least I do, are just different formulations of the same stuff that's been out for years solely created to ensure revenue for that company for 17 more years.* I have a problem with that.)
I like seeing what happens when $4 lists and the like go up against drug companies, because guess who generally wins? (Protip: it generally ends with smiling customers.) Tonight I'm happy with Wal-Mart, because while they were not the first to do that, and I do want to stress that... I think K-Mart among other retailers had been doing it for awhile before Wal-Mart ever came on, and while I don't harbor any thought that Wal-Mart did it for anything else than raking in money and market share, and while I have massive reservations about $4 programs and the like as a whole, Wal-Mart doing it brought it to the mainstream, and in doing so, dealt the drug companies a big blow. I like to see that.
* 17 years is generally the length of time patents last for brand name drugs.
Nearly all of us are aware of the various $4 drug programs... $4 a month, some offer $9.99 for 90 days worth of medication, Publix and, iirc, Meijer offering free antibiotics. Walgreens does not have a strict $4 program, they do have a program called the W Card that you can buy into for $20 a year for an individual and $35 for a family, and it offers similar discounted rates, but you do have to buy into it and it is a pain in the ass to set up, and even worse if you want a refund. (I have personally seen the W Card save people hundreds of dollars, though, so I can't speak too harshly about it. And it will even cover your pets, if they take medication on the list. A list of covered medications is available at your local Walgreens, they just expanded the list. Probably on the website too. Only thing, if you're a Medicare patient, can't use it, Walgreens and Medicare have a deal. Go to another pharmacy for those <3 Ad= over.) Anyway. I can't speak as to what medications are on other companies' $4 lists, but ours are all generic, and I'm betting the lists of other companies are similar.
Contrast this with drug companies. Now, to paint all drug companies with one broad stroke is simplistic and doesn't shed light on why they do what they do, so we can work towards changing it, but that is for another essay. Plainly said, I don't like drug companies. Specifically, I don't like their tactics, a few of which I will outline below:
* Evergreening. Drug companies are known to use techniques such as "evergreening," which is when a drug company will come out with a new drug (or a controlled/extended release format) to replace a drug that just went generic. Nexium is probably the best known example of the former (hi, Prilosec!,) Toprol XL is the best example to me of the latter (Metoprolol is the generic for Toprol.)
* Drug Representatives. Otherwise known as Drug Reps, the scourge of the healthcare industry in my always humble opinion, these people come into play once the drug companies already have their spiffy meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss drug. The drug companies detail them to go out into the field, targeting doctors offices, pharmacies (I actually spoke with a drug rep once. You'll be proud to know I was completely cordial and polite,) individual doctors, individual pharmacists, and doctors and pharmacists to be, and get doctors to prescribe these drugs with happening names, these XR/XL/CR versions of drugs whose perfectly fine previous versions just went generic. You can spot these drugs because they generally come with free 7/30 day coupons that you have to send for and bring to the pharmacy. Pro tip: these drugs aren't always covered by insurance at all, and if they are, it's a pain shoving them through. A quick way of finding out is asking your friendly pharmacy tech to run it through without the coupon first, there's no sense in starting a medication if you won't be able to continue it because your insurance won't pay for it. (Please don't attempt this in drive-thru at 5pm on a first of the month Monday, though. Do it at 2pm on a Wednesday or at night after 8pm if your pharmacy is a 24-hour one, your tech will love you for it.) As a side note, people are always talking about the shit economy these days, and cost-cutting measures, but I ring up thousands of dollars of prescriptions every shift, and one thing I notice is people buying these versions of these drugs with nary a realization that there are generics a lot of the time that would save them a lot of money. Might be worth considering.
* Advertising. At the same times drug companies are sending out drug reps to wine and dine various healthcare-related people and leaving little pens and clocks and shit behind as reminders of their message, they saturate our media... our television shows, our magazines, our newspapers, the websites we visit, with advertisements for these same drugs. Actually, quicker than waiting while the pharmacy tech inputs your prescription and runs it through insurance? Just look to see if your drug has an XR/XL/CR on the end, or if it's one being advertised when they hand you the prescription. If it does, the non controlled/extended release just went generic, which means that if you can get them to write you a script for the generic, you can save yourself a lot of money. Drug companies are certainly not the only ones that do this, but I have a problem with this because I believe advertising medication, thereby making it a very commonplace thing, is turning us into a society of drug users, much more legal than not. By marketing these drugs (by being allowed to market these drugs, she snarls,) they also market the idea that there is a pill that cures whatever ails, whatever ails. And I fervently believe that they are turning us into a nation of hypochondriacs.
Ever notice that whenever we aren't perfectly bouncy and peachy, shiny happy, and if someone asks about it, we usually say something about being depressed? Being sad, in a shitty mood, is not the same as clinical depression. You do not need a pill for that. It is completely normal to not be a shiny happy person all the time. Same for Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, otherwise known as, of course, ADD/ADHD. Note: I am not saying that I don't believe ADD/ADHD is not a valid diagnosis, aiding for Sandberg in high school for 3 years erased all doubt I'll ever have about that. I do think it is overdiagnosed, and sometimes, just sometimes, it isn't the child, it's the environment and society they grow up in. That we have created. We all have trouble focusing sometimes. That does not mean you need a damn pill for it.
In advertising these designer drugs, sending people out to convince doctors to prescribe them, then convincing us we need them, drug companies have created a culture of hypochondria. Message: There is not always a pill to cure what ails. This is because, sometimes, there is nothing wrong in the first place. Don't let them convince you there is.
There are others, of course, but those are the tactics I have the most trouble with.
$4 lists and the like fly directly in the face of all that mess. Generics don't have the breezy designer names, the slim, colorful packaging. All that mess, all the heavy co-pays, are an attempt to recoup the R&D funds and administrative costs it takes to push the drug down the pipeline to us. (Which may beg the question of what is wrong with paying higher co-pays for a drug if it will help to re-coup those costs, which are admittedly significant. The difference to me is that a lot of the drugs you see now, or at least I do, are just different formulations of the same stuff that's been out for years solely created to ensure revenue for that company for 17 more years.* I have a problem with that.)
I like seeing what happens when $4 lists and the like go up against drug companies, because guess who generally wins? (Protip: it generally ends with smiling customers.) Tonight I'm happy with Wal-Mart, because while they were not the first to do that, and I do want to stress that... I think K-Mart among other retailers had been doing it for awhile before Wal-Mart ever came on, and while I don't harbor any thought that Wal-Mart did it for anything else than raking in money and market share, and while I have massive reservations about $4 programs and the like as a whole, Wal-Mart doing it brought it to the mainstream, and in doing so, dealt the drug companies a big blow. I like to see that.
* 17 years is generally the length of time patents last for brand name drugs.