The MS Wire

News, info and tips for living with multiple sclerosis

Tag: drug costs

A Shark Bites into Prescription Costs

Shark bites into prescription costs

My multiple sclerosis prescriptions cost me a lot, even with good insurance. Your prescription costs are probably also high, no matter what your illness is, if you don’t live in a country where the government picks up your drug costs. But now billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is taking a shark-sized bite out of the cost of some of those medications. Cuban is an investor who regularly appears on the “Shark…Continue Reading

MS Meds or Food: A Tough Choice

ms meds or food

Forced by medication costs to choose between regularly taking their medications or buying groceries, some people with multiple sclerosis are choosing the groceries. Some are skipping doses and others have stopped taking their disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) entirely. This troubling news is reported in a survey by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS). The results show that about 40 percent of those surveyed have skipped or stopped taking their DMTs because…Continue Reading

Insurer Sends Patients to Mexico to Find Less Expensive Meds

Less expensive meds

MS medications are expensive in the United States. We all know that. We also know that less expensive meds can be found in places like Canada and Mexico. So, here’s a novel idea from the nonprofit health insurance provider PEHP, which covers state workers and their families in Utah: Pay those patients to buy their expensive meds south of the border. As Erin Alberty reports in The Salt Lake Tribune, the…Continue Reading

Specialty Drugs Mean Specialty Prices

If you have MS, you’ve probably used a specialty drug. My first was Avonex, which I began to use about 1998. Several others followed. There’s no formal definition of a specialty drug, but these therapies have several things in common. First, they’re expensive. According to the vice president in charge of specialty drugs at CVS Pharmacy, the average monthly cost is $3,000. A CVS website article says that’s about 10…Continue Reading

Have You Been Switched from Generic to Brand Name?

  Insurance companies want people to use generics, rather than the more expensive brand-name drugs, right? Maybe not. Because, at least in some cases, they’re doing just the opposite. Some patients are being forced to use brand-name drugs even when those drugs have generic equivalents. It happened to my wife last week. Not surprisingly, that means that some of us with MS could wind up having to dig deeper into…Continue Reading

Getting Help Paying for Your MS Drugs

With the recent approval of the multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus, I’ve again heard the plea “but how can I afford it?” Ocrevus carries a price tag of about $65,000 a year. That’s not high compared to some other MS drugs, but it can still mean a higher co-pay than some patients with insurance can afford. And it can appear to be totally unaffordable for those without coverage. Unless you know…Continue Reading