Like President Obama's co-pay waiver plan for encouraging switches to generic medicines, in general, under Medicaid -- it seems the private insurers are already headed in the same direction. [As an interesting, and largely-tragic aside, click the image at right -- to read about the millions Schering-Plough and Merck spent to promote the non-superiority of Vytorin.] Consider this email I received this afternoon from a high-ranking federal employee:
. . . .We just received a letter from the Blue Cross Federal Employee Program. Beginning in 2010, they have an incentive program to get people to switch to generic medications. For people who fill a prescription for 16 specified brand-name drugs during 2010, and subsequently switch to specified "generic drug replacements," they will waive the first four co-payments on the generic prescription.
Two of the drugs are Crestor and Vytorin. The "generic drug replacements" for Crestor and Vytorin are simvastatin, pravastatin and lovastatin. Lipitor is not one of the 16 drugs in the program. I wonder how many federal employees will switch as a result of this. . . .
I do, too. This is no small number -- as there were about 2.7 million civilian federal employees as of 2008, according to the US Census Bureau's FedStats site. There are about another 3 million in the military, in total. And an additional 2.9 million veterans are receiving compensation for service-connected disabilities as of 2008. So, there are (in this one federal-employee pool, alone!) 9.7 million potential generic-users, out there.
Moreover, it is usually true that once any such program is shown to reduce costs (as this one doubtless will) at one of "the Blues", all the others (Aetna, WellPoint, etc.) will likely follow suit -- if they aren't already making such plans.
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At the moment, the above post is showing up seven times in a row on the Facebook Networked Blogs App page.
It appears here only once.
Looks like a Facebook glitch -- likely will be rectified overnight.
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