Physicians, as well as employers, should aid patients and employees in fully understanding the dangers associated with medication noncompliance, as well as introduce other options available to patients for combating rising drug costs.
According to the survey, 66% of responding consumers didn’t know the price of their medication until they picked it up at the pharmacy counter, while a mere 4% discussed pricing options with their doctor.
Ignorance breeds hazardous behavior as 28% informed the magazine that they’d taken potentially dangerous measures to save money on prescriptions, including not filling prescriptions, skipping doses and cutting pills in half without consulting their doctor.
In a separate study featuring Hispanic American respondents, half of the demographic said they were not adhering to their doctor’s prescriptions, and almost 3 in 10 had chosen to not fill a prescription for financial reasons.
Even more troubling, Hispanic Americans and the greater population do not fully trust, let alone take advantage of, generic drugs. Forty-seven percent of Americans had reservations or misconceptions about taking generic medicine, with 43% of Hispanics claiming that generics sometimes or never work, leaving them with misgivings for the low-cost option.
News of the potential benefits of generic drugs has not fully infiltrated the public psyche, as 52% of the population is spending more than $50 per month on prescription drugs. Physicians are one of the parties to blame for not fully educating their patients about generics, as 46% of consumers said their doctor never or sometimes recommended generics.
The pharmaceutical industry has greatly contributed to misappropriating the value of generics, pushing more individuals to doubt the efficacy and safety of these drugs.
One-fifth of individuals who regularly take a prescription medication have requested a drug from their doctor that they had seen in an ad campaign, with 67% reporting that the doctor wrote that prescription. Within that original group, 80% had received free drug samples from their physician.
“The pharmaceutical industry undermines generic drugs very effectively through advertising and free samples of brand-name drugs, while using more subtle tactics to tell patients and doctors that generics are something to be afraid of,” said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.
Tactics committed by the industry that instilled the most concern include rewarding doctors to write more prescriptions (82%), giving them fully paid trips (77%) or gifts over $50 (76%), and paying for a doctor’s attendance at meetings (67%).
Related coverage:
- Understanding the Rx financial trail: Who pays what, when, where and why
- Ledger provides cautionary tale for employers on preventing Rx abuse, overdose
- Tracking Rx drug spending
