| >And with insulin specifically, there is another problem: diabetics won't take the generic insulin that has been off-patent for years now. A huge reason I found is your doctor won't ever recommend it. Most diabetics may very well just be blissfully ignorant (I was until recently) that it's even an option, save for Wal-Mart very heavily marketing their "Reli-On" branded insulin produced by Novo Nordisk. I wonder if PCPs (not endocrinologists) are even aware it exists. I've had many PCPs in the past few years, from one of the best health care centers in the US, never recommend it as an option, and seemed to forget it even existed. I guess when you recommend Eli Lilly's biologic-developed analogs for decades and decades, you damn near forget about the old school insulin out of habit. I recently switched, WITHOUT a doctor's approval (none would recommend it). I have to be more careful, but my costs of using purely generic everything plummeted to below 1997-era insured levels Increasingly insurance co-pays have gotten far more expensive for the biologics, and increasingly plans don't even cover the biologic-process analogs anymore (where my costs would be $560/mo for just the insulins that aren't covered by my current plan, or $130/mo if I paid another +$230/mo for a better single-person insurance plan -- only a $170/mo net reduction). My uninsured "no prescription required" OTC costs for all my diabetic supplies (two insulins, sharps container, lancets, test strips) are $69/mo, and $18/mo (prescription required) for generic syringes now. It required taking everything in my own hands and telling every PCP I had to #$%& their hat. |