But people have some sort of weird expectations that we know EVERYTHING... case in point:
A lady refuses to pick up her Lialda prescription. Her Medicare plan wants her to pay $400+ for it. She's very upset and asks the usual questions:
Why is my co-pay different than last month?
When does Lialda go generic?
What do you mean I probably have a deductible? I don't have a deductible.
Why hasn't Lialda gone generic yet?
How much will it be next month?
She steps away from the counter to call her husband. She returns and says...
"My husband is a CPA and he says YOU should know how much my co-pay will be next month."
So there you go, folks. If you have a question about anything pharmaceutical, ask your CPA.
They'll be able to tell you everything that they think a pharmacist is supposed to know.
While I know you aren't psychic, as someone who takes Pentasa, do you have any industry knowledge about why there are no generics of mesalamines? I thought Lialda was coming out because Asacol was going to have a generic soon and the drug companies needed a newer "better" brand name to push. Doesn't seem to be the case. There are a ton of people with IBD so I think the market is there. Why no interest generic drug companies?
ReplyDeleteI think you missed the point.
Delete@ Anonymous: I got the point. Her crazy CPA husband said the pharmacist should know what her ever changing copay is. That is bananas, yes.
ReplyDeleteI then took the opportunity to ask Crazy if he happened to have any thoughts on why there hasn't been a mesalamine generic. Maybe I'm the Crazy one but in my industry we get newsletters and there is gossip and conjecture on all kinds of industry stuff. Why a whole large class of drugs has never had a generic is something we would be talking about. I completely understand it was not the point of his post. It made me think of the question though and I wanted to ask.
If his point is the pharmacists have no gossip, no conjecture, no industry knowledge on when, where, why and how pharmaceuticals are manufactured then yes, I did miss the point. I understood that he doesn't KNOW when one will come out but I thought he might know WHY it has been treated differently than all other meds.
Perhaps because it has a local effect instead of systemic, it would be difficult to do a bioavailability study. Just a guess.
ReplyDeleteMy customers call their Medicaid HMO customer service desks until they find someone who will tell them what they want. Then the customer service tech knows everything.