Be Active in Your Health Care
By Scott Culver
Communications Specialist
WEA Trust
March 2004
If your doctor said you needed a medication to lower your cholesterol,
you probably wouldn’t be surprised if he or she suggested Zocor
or Lipitor, two highly advertised and commonly dispensed cholesterol
reducers.
Lipitor and Zocor were first and second, respectively, in U.S. drug
sales in 2002, totaling more than $10 billion in revenue, according
to IMS Health. However, would you feel comfortable asking your doctor
if there is an equally effective yet less costly alternative for your
condition?
Most Americans don’t engage their doctors in conversations such
as this, according to a Wall Street Journal Online and Harris Interactive
poll. The poll found only one in four Americans discussed the costs
to them for a drug their doctor prescribed.
Cholesterol-reducing drugs, or statins, were among the top three drug
classes in terms of prescriptions dispensed in 2002, according to IMS
Health. And a majority of those prescriptions were written for Lipitor
and Zocor – the most heavily promoted and advertised drugs in
this class.
For some patients with very high cholesterol, a statin such as Lipitor
is appropriate, but a lower-cost generic is available – one that
meets the cholesterol-lowering needs of most patients. It’s called
lovastatin. But lovastatin has only about 3% of the statin market.
The WEA Trust includes statins in its step therapy program, which means
we ask doctors to consider lovastatin as the initial treatment for patients
who need a statin. Lovastatin is the generic version of a drug called
Mevacor, which Merck introduced in 1987. Lovastatin is not on most doctors’
radar because marketers no longer promote it, and consumers don’t
know to ask about it.
Generic drugs, on average, cost 30% to 60% less than their brand-name
equivalents but struggle to be noticed. They also often enjoy the advantage
of having been used for years, so any adverse side effects are known
and can be minimized.
As a health care consumer, you can take steps to arm yourself with
information about prescription drugs and become a more active member
of your health care team.
Posted February 27, 2004