By: Dale M. King
My wife and I are at a point in our lives when we are depending more and more on prescription drugs. During the past few months, we have both dealt with health issues requiring us to take several different drugs in addition to our maintenance medications.
My own personal physician has agreed that whenever possible, he prescribes generic medications. He has gladly done it, and I have – at least for the past few years – noticed that the generics generally save money.
As we prepare to begin the New Year, it seems that this is no longer true. My opinion? Generics are no longer the money-saving alternatives to brand names. I don’t know why. I have tried to find out why. I checked the Internet, but the best thing I could come up with was an old story about the rising cost of prescriptions.
I have two cases in point. My wife had to fill a prescription the other day. First off, the doctor sent the prescription to the wrong pharmacy (right name, wrong location). The cost of it was $89. What’s happening in this world? What would people on a fixed income do? If they had to buy this drug, it would no doubt become a question of buying food and buying prescriptions.
Another case in point. I am in the process of preparing for a medical procedure in January. I have had to fill a number of prescriptions. A doctor recently prescribed a drug which he assured was a generic. I took it to my regular pharmacy to fill it. The cost was over $23. I have to ask the pharmacist if that was correct. She said yes.
A few days earlier, I had filled a new prescription at the same pharmacy. I asked another person in that department what the cost would be since it was a generic. He said it would be around $15, which, in fact, turned out to be true.
I remember the days of getting generic prescriptions for $4 or $5. Guess those days are gone.
But that’s the question. Why are generic drug costs pushing up to – and in some cases, past – the level of brand name drugs? I was told not to blame the pharmacies or the doctors. I was told the drug companies control the prices. And control, apparently, is the operant word.
I did find a story on the Internet which said that prescription medicines, on average, rose 6.9 percent in 2008, just past the 6.8 percent average advance registered in 2008, which was the largest annual jump since prices had been tallied on an annual basis.
Some of the biggest, the article said: the Benicar blood pressure pill sold by Daiichi Sankyo rose 29.3 percent; the Gleevec cancer treatment marketed by Novartis jumped 20.9 percent; Johnson & Johnson’s Concerta pill for ADD moved up 19.7 percent; Pfizer’s Lipitor cholesterol blockbuster increased12.4 percent and the Plavix blood thinner sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis rose 13.2 percent.
We are just a few days away from welcoming 2012 – and we know that the biggest party of the year will not take place on New Year’s Eve. It will take place this coming November, after all the ballots for president of the United States are counted. Either Barack Obama will be jumping for joy, or an unspecified Republican will be collecting the laurels.
Prescription drug costs may seem like a small issue compared to the really large problems out there. And certainly there are many. But Mr. Obama doesn’t seem all that concerned since he’s in the middle of a $4 million, taxpayer-paid vacation in Hawaii. I wonder how much he pays for his prescriptions?