DrugBuyers.Com: Prilosec Meds

I don't work for a pharmaceutical company and I don't want anything. I'm not advocating any policy or process, I simply explained the reason for their existence.

However, if the insurance companies did not feel that it was in their long-term best interest, they simply would not cover the medication as part of their formulary, and many insurance companies do not cover certain medications, or certain dosage forms. Specifically regarding Prilosec, the prescription is a capsue, while the other is a tablet, and fewer and fewer insurance providers are providing coverage for the prescription version, as there is not a substantial therapeutic benefit between the capsule and tablet form of this drug. Insurance companies do very little that is not in their own best interest, and if they cover a drug, they feel it is for either the benefit of their members or the current expense is likely to help them avoid having to pay for MORE expensive therapies down the road.

Declining pricing is absoltuely commonplace. Were there as many competitors to Prilosec years ago? Had the company already recovered their research and development costs? Would YOU develop any product and sell it for less than the most others would pay? Even more so, would you invest money in someone who was willing to do so? If so, bravo; but that's not the way the majority of the world works, my friend. I'm not advocating it, I'm just describing it.

As for the general cost difference between an equivalent medication being more expensive by prescription, well OF COURSE it's going to be. No pharmacist is involved in its dispensing, there is no additional packaging cost, or the labor to handle the prescription once it has been filled. Not a complicated formula.

Now, if you are standing in a pharmacy, and you have a choice between choosing the prescription version of Prilosec at $120.00 or buying the OTC at $30, and you choose to purchase the prescription, that's your own Best if kept off the board fault.

However, you also have to ask yourself the question that if your doctor hands you a prescription for Prilosec, and your insurance will cover it for a $5.00 copay, do you go ahead and have it filled, or do you pick up the OTC and shell out the $30 on behalf of keeping insurance costs low?

If you want to complain about the high cost of medication, price gouging manufacturers, or whether or not you can afford your own health insurance, fine; but you have to be willing to do two things. First, be willing to step out of the vaccuum and factor in the real world which includes real considerations that insurance plans typically change their coverage formularies annually during the enrollment periods, and drugs come off patent or get OTC approval on a schedule of their own, and may be contractually obligated, or choose to provide coverage for certain medications in the interim. Second, you have to be willing to take it somewhere else, because I have only been explaining a process to you and some of the reasons it exists. I haven't advocated right or wrong in favor of anyone or anything, and I have NO idea why you would imply that I had.