Do you know how much your prescription costs? Does your Doctor or Prescriber? According to a recent poll (PDF) by the Consumer's Union, 4% of patients have this conversation with their doctors, and 60% of patients find out what they prescription costs when they show up at the pharmacy.
According to an article on WebMD, patients and their doctors don't talk about the price of prescriptions. Instead, they suffer sticker shock at the pharmacy. Then, they go home and exercise their cost reducing measures without benefit of medical advice:
The poll confirms what many other studies have shown: that many patients regularly resort to measures such as cutting pills in half, skipping doses, or skipping medication altogether in an effort to save on medical bills.
Many patients don't know that generic drugs are usually just as effective as the brand name drugs. Consumer's Union has guides to the cheaper generic drugs. Of course, patients shouldn't just go with the generic at the pharmacy without talking to their doctors. They should TALK TO THEIR DOCTORS!
The Obama Administration has a plan to conduct studies comparing the effectiveness of different pharmaceuticals, devices, and treatments. Of course, Big Pharma and manufacturers of therapeutic devices are opposed to this plan because they
...worry that it could be used as an excuse to ration health care. They warn that the government and insurers could decide to pay only for the cheapest treatments, impairing the decisions doctors and patients can make.
How they must worry about who gets treatment! And they are backed up in this worry by none other than the Heritage Foundation through its Director of Center for Health Policy Studies, Robert Moffitt. He says,
...few are opposed to getting the best treatments for the best price. "Who the heck is against that?"
"The issue is a federal infrastructure that will give a seal of approval about what to do," he says. He urges doctors and patients to have "a profound distrust" of how the research could be used as Washington tries to find a way to save hundreds of billions of dollars as part of overall health reform.
Who the heck, indeed, is against that? Certainly not Big Pharma - at least, they are not against the best treatment. If Doctors don't prescribe drugs, their drugs, they won't make money. But gawd save us all from suffering any profound distrust of how Washington might save us billions of dollars!
And gawd forbid that we look to Europe for models of 1st world heath care coverage:
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was also critical of the proposal. "They're going to look at cost, just like England does, and say, we can't afford it so we won't do it," he says. Coburn is a doctor and a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Wouldn't want to give health care we couldn't afford.