by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Aug 1, 2014 | Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
We wanted to take a break from talking about prescription savings, online pharmacy, big Pharma this, the FDA that, personal drug importation, etc. You know how strongly we feel about your right to find medications you need at affordable prices. We’ll take this time to remind you about the problem of overprescribing in America. In other words, millions of Americans may be taking medications that they don’t even need! America’s crazy spending on prescription drugs – which is the highest in the world – is in part due to high prices, but it’s also partly due to patients, health plans, and government buying medication that is not even needed.
The satirist website The Onion just published a piece that pokes fun at the problem of overprescribing and we thought we’d keep it light this Friday afternoon. They cover GlaxoSmithKline’s “release” of Placidex – a drug used to treat people who just “feel sort of weird sometimes.” If you think you might need Placidex, or know someone who does, read more about it here. Of course, you can expect that if this were an actual drug, its price would be untenable, at least for Americans.
And if you are feeling less silly, here’s one more infographic on overprescribing in America.
Tagged with: Overprescribing, Placidex, The Onion
by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Jun 20, 2014 | Generic drugs, Pharmaceutical Industry
Americans are used to finding low-cost generic medications about six months to a year after they’re approved by the FDA. Think Lipitor, Plavix and Lexapro, which are all priced about 80% lower as generics.
Unfortunately, patients who had been looking forward to newly-approved generic versions of Nexium, Diovan, or Valcyte will have to keep waiting as a knot of legal and regulatory guidelines delay their U.S. release. The FDA approved Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy’s generic versions of these meds but has banned the plants to be used for their production from exporting products to the U.S., due to findings of substandard manufacturing practices.
You’d think that another drug manufacturer could just make and market the drug, but the U.S. approval system doesn’t allow that. The FDA grants six months of exclusive marketing rights to the company that first gains approval for a generic drug. We wrote about this process two weeks ago in our blog post covering generic Celebrex. Even though Ranbaxy’s plants can’t export generic versions of Nexium, Diovan, and Valcyte to the U.S., it still retains marketing exclusivity in the U.S. market!
This is good news for brand name drug makers and bad news for consumers. Global sales for Nexium, Diovan, and Valcyte totaled $8 billion last year. Delays to generic Diovan have grossed Swedish drugmaker Novartis $100 million a month. Cash-paying Americans, as usual, are hurt most by these shenanigans as they continue to pay high prices for brand-name medication. Taxpayers should also be unhappy, since they are footing the bill for these brand name drugs purchased through programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
There is, however, a bit of good news on the horizon – the European Medicines Agency, an Agency under the European Union that evaluates medicinal products (like the FDA), will reinstate the good manufacturing practices certificate for Ranbaxy’s Toansa plant, which was slated to produce generic Nexium and Diovan. Hopefully, these improvements are good enough for the FDA.
In the meantime, so you’re not held hostage to drug price insanity, you can find these brand medications internationally at amazing discounts. Feel free to compare their prices:
Diovan – save 70%
Valcyte – save 70%
Nexium – save 93%
Tagged with: Diovan, Nexium, Ranbaxy, Valcyte
by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Feb 20, 2014 | Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
As recently reported by PBS, America continues to outspend other rich countries on pharmaceuticals, spending almost $1,000 per person on prescription drugs in 2013. Canada, the second highest spender, spent about $700 per person. This is despite one in five Americans skipping doses or a script due to cost, as well as an extremely high percentage (84% in 2011) of prescriptions being written for generic medications.
So what’s up? Well, for one, our drug prices are much higher. Our latest analysis of brand-name drugs sold by international online pharmacies found that their prices were 88% lower when compared to a pharmacy in New York City.
Major drug price differences aren’t the only reason for higher U.S. spending. PBS explains that Americans, sadly, fill more scripts due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure, which of course equates with greater numbers of prescription drug purchases. Another factor is that it’s relatively easy for drug companies to get new drugs approved and in to the U.S. market.
I was a bit surprised that PBS didn’t mention direct-to-consumer advertising as a possible reason for why we use more drugs. New Zealand is the only other country that allows direct-to-consumer advertising, but they have much lower drug prices than the U.S., due to government regulations.
For the newly insured, Obamacare might mean lower prices for consumers, but that doesn’t mean overall national spending will go down. Lower out of pocket costs from better co-pay or co-insurance models will likely just mean higher premiums and increased reimbursement to drug manufacturers by insurance companies. Look at it this way: if you spend $20 less on a drug per month, but your premium is $20 more, you’re not really any better off.
Interestingly, U.S. drug spending decreased slightly last year, thanks largely to patent expirations resulting in more generic drugs penetrating the market. While PBS mentions that the decline is expected to last another 2-3 years, I’m not so optimistic. For one, generic drug prices are rising, sometimes by thousands of percent. Second, more coverage under Obamacare means more prescriptions, and naturally more spending. Only time will tell…
Tagged with: drug spending, Obamacare, PBS
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jan 31, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
Due to its lobbying efforts against drug importation reform to lower medication costs and funding of groups that mislead Americans about online pharmacies, scaring them away from safe and affordable medication sold outside the U.S., we often criticize Big Pharma on this blog. Speaking somewhat personally, I question myself sometimes whether they are deserving of such constant criticism. And then I read Daniel Hoffman from Philly.com in “Drug Prices: Higher and Higher” – and I’m reminded that they are!
Big Pharma is a on global government relations blitzkrieg to pressure countries into raising drug prices, spouting nonsense that the higher drug prices are supported by lower health care costs overall. Dr. Hoffman writes about pharma’s efforts in Germany to end a practice that enables doctors and other healthcare professionals to determine if new medications are truly an advance over old ones and merit higher drug prices. If they don’t then the government insurance plans will not reimburse for those products at a higher rate than older, proven medications. Seems fair!
Dr. Hoffman writes that India, with an incredibly dynamic pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, fights back against what that country views as overly aggressive intellectual property claims by Western drug companies. Sometimes India even views those patents as a threat to public health, and when it does it issues a “compulsory license” – the right to manufacture a generic even though there’s a patent in place.
I contend that this tactic can be abused by governments pressured by their own pharmaceutical industries – such as India. However, sometimes they are needed to save lives. What made me sick was a comment made by the CEO of Bayer, Marijib Dekkers, about India’s issuing a compulsory license for the drug Nexavar, which treats late stage kidney cancer. I’d prefer to quote a long section from Hoffman’s piece:
“We did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians,” Marijn Dekkers declared with unconcealed disdain. “We developed it for western patients who can afford it.”
A spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders later claimed that Dekkers represents ” ‘everything that is wrong’ with the multinational pharmaceutical industry.” (See here.)
That may be one way of looking at it. The other is that Dekkers is just more candid in admitting that pharma is all about making money and if millions of people have to die as a result, that’s just the way it is.
So are we being too hard on Big Pharma? The answer is no.
Tagged with: Bayer, Daniel Hoffman, Nexavar
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Dec 31, 2013 | Advocacy, Online Pharmacies, Personal Drug Importation, Pharmaceutical Industry, Politics
This article summarizes good things and bad that are happening online with drug prices and savings, economics, legislation, politics, and even ethics that relate to access by Americans to more affordable medication offered by safe international online pharmacies. If you’re a consumer – especially an American consumer facing high drug costs – you should read this. When you’re done (or even right now!) we recommend joining RxRights to help play a role in making medication more affordable for all Americans.
Next year, we’re planning to focus more attention on local Americans pharmacies: what they’re doing right, wrong, and in between, and how you can save and take advantage of their in-store opportunities to improve your health! But for now, the international online pharmacy report…
The Good
The money Americans could save on brand name drugs by shopping at safe international online pharmacies continued to increase in 2013. In 2011 , we reported potential savings of 80%, then a mind-boggling 85% in 2012, and now 87.6% in 2013! Savings have proliferated because America’s trading partners, such as Australia, Canada, the states of the European Union, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, generally, have kept brand drug prices stable, whereas in America they increased by an estimated 13% last year.
The pricing data referred to above is from our prescription drug price savings research released this past September. In that report we looked at popular prescription drugs that are not always covered by health insurance plans, including new plans offered as a result of Obamacare. An extreme example of savings is on the drug Abilify 10 mg, a medication prescribed for depression; $9,007.08 could be saved annually by purchasing the drug from the lowest-cost online pharmacy verified by PharmacyChecker.com compared with a retail pharmacy in New York City. A more common example of potential annual savings from international pharmacies is the $3,935.28 savings on Spiriva Handihaler 18 mcg. Drug prices are out of control in the U.S., especially for those with no domestic generic alternative, and access to international online pharmacies is as urgent as ever.
It would, of course, be better if Americans could find more reasonable prices on brand name drugs at their local pharmacies.
(more…)
Tagged with: BeSafeRx, CSIP, FDA, ICANN, international online pharmacy, NABP, RxRights
by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Dec 12, 2013 | Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
I’d be pretty upset if the next time I went to the pharmacy to pick up my asthma medication, the pharmacist asked me for $150. Why? Because I usually only pay $15 for it. Unfortunately, Americans all around the country might actually be facing this problem. In parts of Arizona, the price of a medication to treat valley fever rose 1,000%. At some Costco stores, the price of one dosage of Irbesartan jumped to about nine times the price of other dosages.
One person’s lament about the price of Asacol HD jumping from $50 to $600 is shared on YouTube. Fortunately, he could afford the new price and had some extra medication he could take. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky.
To quote his video, the “only reason the companies will stop doing B.S. like this is if people stand up to it and say ‘That is not okay!’” Until that happens effectively, you can compare prices at local and online pharmacies to make sure you find the most affordable medication.
Tagged with: Asacol, Irbesartan
