by PharmacyChecker.com | Jan 10, 2012 | Advocacy
While PharmacyChecker.com’s main focus is on safe and affordable prescription medication, we are aware that many of our website visitors also take over-the-counter (OTC) products. It’s important to bring to their attention safety issues with OTC products, as we have done in the past. We want to point out that some popular OTC medicines in the United States are being recalled due to potentially serious manufacturing flaws, as reported by the FDA and featured on MSNBC.com.
OTC meds manufactured at Novartis Consumer Health Inc. in its Lincoln, Nebraska plant may have been mixed with dangerous painkiller medication, such as Percocet, Endocet, Opana and Zydone. While the mixture dose is said to be minimal, Novartis Health is voluntarily recalling some select bottle sizes of Excedrin, No Doz, Bufferin and Gas-x Prevention since there may be some stray tablets or capsules and/or could contain broken or chipped tablets.
If you have these medications, be sure to check the manufactured date and location properly, and take a look inside the bottle itself too, before taking them. The medicine may need to be discarded or returned to the manufacturer for a refund. See below for details from the manufacturer.
Note from Novartis-OTC.com: Novartis Consumer Health (NCH) is voluntarily recalling all lots of select bottle sizes of Excedrin® and NoDoz® products with expiry dates of December 20, 2014 or earlier as well as Bufferin® and Gas-X® Prevention® products with expiry dates of December 20, 2013 or earlier, in the United States.
Tagged with: Bufferin, Endocet, Excederin, FDA, Gas-x Prevention, MSNBC.com, No Doz, Novartis Consumer Health, Opana, OTC, Percocet, prescriptions, recall, Zydone
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 20, 2011 | Drug Prices
The simple answer is that tens of millions of Americans cannot afford prescription drugs here in the United States because they’re too expensive. Meanwhile, drug prices outside the U.S. are much lower – often 80% lower. Americans skipping or not taking prescription drugs is a national emergency largely going ignored in our healthcare debate.
Here are the facts about Americans skipping medication due to drug prices:
1. 25 million Americans did not take prescribed medication in 2009 due to cost, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 1997 to 2009, the percentage of Americans not taking their medications due to cost nearly doubled increasing from 4.8 to 8.4%.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics 2011. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus10.pdf#highlights
2. 48 million Americans ages 19-64 did not fill a prescription due to cost in 2010, according to the Commonwealth Fund – a 66% increase since 2001.
Source: The Commonwealth Fund 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Surveys/2011/Mar/2010-Biennial-Health-Insurance-Survey.aspx.
3. 3.4 million Medicare enrollees stop taking their medication due to the coverage gap.
Source: Polinski JM, Shrank WH, Huskamp HA, Glynn RJ, Liberman JN, et al. 2011 Changes in Drug Utilization during a Gap in Insurance Coverage: An Examination of the Medicare Part D Coverage Gap. PLoS Medicine.
4. Prescription non-adherence adds $290 billion to America’s healthcare costs.
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 76 FR 12969. March 2011. http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/03/09/2011-5287/campaign-to-improve-poor-medication-adherence-u18.
Access our RxSOS fact sheet here.
Tagged with: Commonwealth Fund, coverage gap, Drug Prices, FDA, FDA warnings, healthcare, international pharmacies, Medicare, National Center for Health Statistics, PLoS, prescription non-adherence, prescriptions, Public Library of Science, safety, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, United States
by PharmacyChecker.com | Jul 1, 2011 | Drug Importation, Online Pharmacies, Personal Drug Importation
Per the FDA’s invitation for regulation reviews and comments as listed by the Federal Registrar, our vice president, Gabriel Levitt, submitted PharmacyChecker.com’s positions and suggestions pertaining to online pharmacies and personal drug importation.
Our first point is that there is inaccurate information provided for consumers on the FDA’s website relating to online pharmacies and drug safety. Consumers are misled to believe that any pharmacy not located in the United States is dangerous, or non-reputable, while experience and studies show that properly verified international online pharmacies are safe. Additionally, the FDA’s website communicates that only FDA-approved drugs are checked for safety and effectiveness, a claim for which there is no basis. In fact, some so-called “non FDA-approved” drugs are the exact same drugs made by Pfizer or Merck, for example, just labeled or colored differently.
We then recommend revisions to Section 9.2 of the FDA Regulatory Procedures Manual Imports and Exports, which guides FDA practices in enforcing our drug importation laws. We recommend that FDA’s personal drug importation policy explicitly disallow government officials from seizing personally imported prescription orders destined for Americans that they know are genuine and dispensed pursuant to a prescription. The ethical and economic basis for our recommendation is that prescription non-adherence (not taking your meds) often furthers illness, leading to more emergency room visits, costing the nation hundreds of billions in healthcare dollars.
Finally, we ask that the FDA ban enforcement actions against foreign companies that are known to operate safe international mail-order pharmacies. Studies show that cost is the number one reason that Americans do not take their medications, and cutting off access to these safe and affordable pharmacies means fewer Americans will take their prescribed medicines.
Our full submission can be accessed here.
Tagged with: Consumer Information, Docket No. FDA-2011-N-0259, Drug, Enforcement, FDA, NABP, Periodic Review of Existing Regulations
