I wasn’t exactly happy to read that Shire had raised the price of Adderall XR by 33.5%, following the trend of other pharmas to raise prices on medications that are shown to be effective and are often prescribed.

According to the WSJ article, the higher prices are supposed to force patients to new medications as the older ones’ patents expire:

It’s a tactic that pharmaceutical companies use “to shift patients to next-generation drugs by making old ones so expensive,” says Michael Krensavage, a drug-industry analyst with Raymond James & Associates. For example, Sanofi raised Ambien’s price ahead of its loss of patent protection last year so that it was more expensive than Ambien CR, a new formulation, to encourage patients to switch to Ambien CR, which will be patent-protected for several more years.

These kinds of practices are great unless you happen to be one of the schmucks who has to fight like a dog to get your insurance company to approve a medication that works, and still end up paying huge copayments on them.

The moral of the story seems to be this: In the short run, you might save money by switching to a newer med, but in the long run, you’ll save money by sticking with the one that works.

Really, this practice shouldn’t be allowed or tolerated by doctors. Why switch if it works?

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