Drug Coupons Being Issued For Off Patent Brand Name Drugs

By Cornelius Nunev


There are a number of serious efforts out there to keep individuals off narcotics. That extends to pharmaceuticals also, as some corporations want to keep people off generic drugs. The largest prescription corporations, alias "Big Pharma" are issuing narcotic coupons to keep people using brand drugs that have gone off-patent.

Saving on generic narcotics

Generic drug businesses can only produce brand-name prescriptions for cheap if they are "off patent." Generic narcotics are much cheaper and save individuals a ton. Consumers are okay with this kind of government intervention, even though it is otherwise debated.

Of course, the companies that produce the drug do not like losing all that business. In fact, they get really angry when they spend a ton of cash to produce a specific drug that is then just stolen by many businesses. Fortunately, some of them have come up with an idea to keep consumers after the patent expires, according to USA today. The drug corporations are offering drug coupon codes to consumers that allow them to keep using the narcotics at a massive discount.

Getting a narcotic coupon

Last year, Lipitor went off patent after making a lot of cash for many years. It costs $10 to get the one-month supply of the generic drug to save a life and $25 to $50 to get the brand-name prescription generally, costing a massive cash advance. The coupon that drug business Pfizer started handing out is for $4 prescriptions for patients as long as the co-pay is $79 or less. That is a massive discount.

Anybody who has a $79 or more co-pay will get a discount on a sliding scale. Those without insurance should, in theory, be able to get Lipitor for $100 with the coupon since it is for $75 off. Normally, uninsured sufferers would pay $175 for the medication.

The Washington Post explained that there are other medications providing coupon codes after getting off-patent. This involves Bristol-Meyers Squibb's Plavix and Novartis' Diovan.

Hated and loved

It isn't simple to drum up a lot of sympathy for Big Pharma. For every breakthrough, there's a scandal. The largest fines issued in cases of corporate malfeasance are often handed out to pharmaceutical corporations. They also spend billions of dollars and upward of a decade of time in creating medications, many of which are life-saving. Generic narcotic companies make the same drug without development costs which, according to CBS, accounts for the discount of up to 90 percent.

The narcotic coupons should make Big Pharma $32 billion in the next decade. Insurance businesses like generics better as the copay is cheaper and the narcotic is cheaper, according to USA Today.

About 85 percent of individuals using Lipitor started using a generic before June was over. About 80 percent of all prescriptions are for generic narcotics.



No comments:

Post a Comment