pharma mystery

[cellio]

I don't understand the drug industry. Ok, ok, nobody does. Let me be more specific: I don't understand what's going on with one of my glaucoma drugs, Xalatan.

This drug has been on the market since 1996 without a generic option, meaning it costs more than $100 a month if you pay for it yourself (which of course most people don't, but delving into insurance-based pricing in this post would be scope creep). My co-pay is higher for a name-brand drug than for a generic, so I have personal interest in this going generic.

About a year ago word on the street was that the patent was due to expire last September, but something seems to have happened because it's now, according to the patent office, locked in until early 2011. According to my doctor, some insurance companies are applying pressure to ophthamologists, pushing them to use different drugs instead to treat this condition because of the expense. One way or another, it appears that Pfizer has about another year to collect the big bucks from customers before they have to accept that a 15-year monopoly is a pretty good run.

Given all that, I was surprised at this morning's checkup to receive not only a free sample (a month's supply) but also a card that I can use four times or up to $350, whichever comes first, getting my prescription filled. So my next four bottles of the stuff will be free. Before I use that up I'll have another checkup, at which I might score another freebie and perhaps another card. Even if the promotion is over by then, they'll have given up four months' worth of monopoly pricing on me in their final year of being guaranteed to collect it.

How is this in their interest? I'm happy to pocket the savings; I've been pouring money into keeping my glaucoma at bay for as long as I've been paying my own bills. (It was diagnosed when I was a child.) But I don't understand why I'm getting these savings at this time.

Comments

[woodwindy.livejournal.com]

They're desperately trying to build brand loyalty while they still can? I can't come up with anything else that seems even remotely plausible -- you're right, it is odd.

[cellio]

schulman (below) is on to something.

I have no brand loyalty for drugs (or much of anything else where I can't perceive a difference). If my doctor says there's equivalent, I will take the generic that costs me $10 a pop (and with the lower overall price) instead of the name brand that costs me $25 a pop. (My insurance company charges the higher co-pay for all name-brand drugs, not just the ones for which a generic is available.)

[alienor.livejournal.com]

I've had problems with one of my prescription "generics" not being equivalent. The doctor I was seeing at the time said that his patients were reporting the same thing with that particular drug, but we didn't know until the generic came onto the market.

I'm pretty wary of new generics now.

[cellio]

Yeah, if they're not equivalent, all bets are off. My doctor has high hopes in this particular case, but of course we won't know until there's actually one available that people can start testing.

[ariannawyn.livejournal.com]

YOU may have no brand loyalty (and neither do I), but a lot of people do. "Ask you doctor about [drug]..." I agree that's the only motivation I can come up with for the pharma co.

And as someone else already said, not all generics are actually equivalent to their name-brand inspiration... We ran into that with one of my kids' meds and had a brief fight with the insurance co until the prescribing doc got on our side and signed on the "brand-name specified" line of the script each time.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

*ouch* I was kinda lucky and unlucky in my case. My insurance won't cover the brand name if there's a generic, no matter what... but the generic was only available in certain doses. So the doctor wrote my script in a way that I had to get 2 x mg pills rather than 1 2x mg pill. The 2x mg pill had a generic, but the x mg pill didn't. It was weird.

[cellio]

Yeah, if they're not really equivalent that's completely different. I've had good luck with generics so far, but that's no guarantee. But when this one goes generic we're certainly going to look into it.