The more than 25 million Americans with asthma experience wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and shortness of breath. Their condition can range from simply being uncomfortable to being lethal. More than 6 million asthma patients are children.1
Asthma’s prevalence has more than doubled in recent decades, yet the disease remains highly individualized. Patients’ triggers, the severity of their symptoms, their ability to manage their condition, and their success with different treatments and delivery mechanisms varies.
While clinicians recognize this fact, health plans may not. Insurance coverage models too often embrace a one-size-fits-all approach that generalizes care based on rigid disease-state algorithms that prioritize the lowest-priced treatment options. The approach incorrectly assumes that patients are interchangeable, and that children are just small adults.
Increasingly, insurance companies and even pharmacies2 may drive changes in asthma medication or delivery device that are unnecessary, expensive and even dangerous for patients.
