I take 450 mg. of a particular medication a day. It only comes in 300 mg. and 150 mg. tablets, so I have prescriptions for both strengths and take one of each.
I recently found out that the 300 mg. tablet is available in generic form at $10 for a three-month supply, but the 150 mg. tab is not, so I pay $92 for three months of it. (And it’s an extended-release medication, so I can’t cut the 300 mg. tabs in half.)
Even more horrendous was needing a stop-gap 30-day prescription to cover me until my mail order delivery came. Thirty days of the brand name 150 mg. filled at my local pharmacy was $66!
WTF??? Why would one strength be available as generic and one not? (And why not the lower dosage? If it were, I could just take three of those.)
You didn’t say which medication this was but I’m going to make a guess. If I’m guessing correctly this one comes as an XL 300mg, 150mg (24-hour) and a SR 150mg (12-hour) sustained release tablets. The XL 300mg are generic as well as the 150mg SR. The XL 150mg is not yet generic because I believe it was patented later as a separate formulation. Patents are tricky with sustained release mechanisms because not only is the chemical in question protected but also the mechanism of sustained release used. Talk to your doctor, it might be possible (and it definitely is possible in certain cases) to change the prescription and use XL 300mg and SR 150mg together.
Just because the generic is not available, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not allowed to make it. Maybe there’s just not a big enough market for the 150 size.
I’ve been confused by this, too. When I was younger they tried to treat a fungasl infection I had with Selenium Sulfide Suspension. (It didnm’t work). It was a prescription item.
It turns out that SelSun Blue shampoo is the same stuff (Selenium Sulfide. Duh.), but at 1/2 the concentration. Available over-the-counter, and cheaper.
So why make me buy the prescription stuff? It’s not as if I can overdose – it’s suspension + shampoo! I’m not taking a metered “dose” as it is!
This is really a separate question, why something is prescribed when it is available OTC at another dosage, and lots of things could have influenced what happened to you. One thing is that by and large doctors are just thinking about the science of things, not the business of buying and selling them. So the doctor prescribed the chemical/medicine he thought would cure your infection. This *may * have been because with an actual infection, the higher concentration was medically a good idea. Also, sometimes when a medicine has been prescribed your insurance will pay for it, which may be cheaper for you. This depends on your insurance. For example, if you have a $10 copay, you’d rather pay $7 for shampoo. But if you have an 80/20 plan, you’d rather pay 20% of a $20 medicine.
If this happens again (of course, hoping not) go ahead and ask your doctor if the Selsun Blue would be an acceptable treatment.
I believe drug companies sometimes use unwieldy dosages for their medicines to promote use of branded products over generic ones. If I fill out a script for Naprosyn brand naproxen, the patient will get that. If I fill out a script for naproxen 550mg, the patient will still get naprosyn since the generic stuff in Canada comes in 250mg and 500mg tablets and no one wants to take 20% of a pill. I think delivery mechanisms only play a role in a small percentage of medicines, such as Effexor XR or Contins.
