October 28, 2008

  • A Case of Government Meddling

    I will agree with most anyone that prescription drugs are way too costly in this country. The government thinks so, too, and in their feable attempt to "fix" the problem, has placed regulation on drug company marketing funds beginning January 1.

    I discovered this on my way home from a Taking Control of Your Diabetes conference in Des Moines this weekend. I rode up with a health care provider from town who was going as well. She and I attended different morning sessions as caregiver and patient, and we shared some of the information we learned on the way home.

    One of the things we talked about was that the health care folks are spending what's left of their marketing money great guns right now because come Jan. 1 they will not be allowed to do so. I like the fact that I won't be seeing nearly as many commercials encouraging me to "Ask your doctor about Drug X" without ever really finding out what Drug X is supposed to be for, but the new regulations is also drying up the samples that doctors often use to help those of us without insurance stay on prescriptions we could not afford otherwise.

    My case in point, I had a terrible time controlling my blood sugars. Even on the generic meds, I could not seem to get them below 150. Granted, my lifestyle needs some serious changing, too, and we are working on getting that exercise squeezed in there. However, the doctor put me on Actos, which is a new type of drug that's only been around about 10 years, which triggers my muscles to absorb more of the glucose in my system. This drug has no generic as yet, and costs $250 for a 30-day supply. There is no way I can afford this with the other medications I am on, so the doc has kept me supplied in samples for the past 2 years. She has also been able to keep me on samples of Lipitor, which runs $80 per month and also has no generic. Samples of both of these are drying up.

    There have been rumors for a few months now that Actos will be available in a generic form sometime in 2009. This was confirmed at the conference this weekend. It's going generic because Takeda, the drug manufacturer, is coming out with a new drug for diabetes next year and will allow the Actos to go to the generic manufacturers. The doctor and I were hoping to stay on the samples until it went generic, but when I called her yesterday for a refill, she said she hasn't anymore and isn't going to get anymore.

    So, a program that physicians have used to help patients is now discontinued because the government wants to regulate their marketing, not thinking that those samples are part of marketing.

    The good thing for now is there is one other drug in the same category of Actos, and the doc has samples of that left. So we are going to try Avandia for a while and see how that goes. If she runs out of the samples, Avandia is only $140 per month instead of the $250. It's steep, but still better than the other. I will start on the Avandia tomorrow and see how it works. If we run out of the samples before the Actos is available, then at least the Avandia is $110 less than the Actos. Hopefully it works too. It's supposed to do the same thing with the triggering the muscles to accept more of the glucose. Actos is supposed to be better for your heart than Avandia, but like hubby said, I am relatively young yet and don't have any heart problems at the moment. I'm hoping for it to be a stopgap until the generic is available.

    I just wonder how many more things the government is gonna mess up in their attempt to reform health care in this country.