By Madelaine A. Feldman, MD, FACR
Not everyone can afford the medication they need. To make drugs more accessible, manufacturers sometimes provide co-pay coupons to help patients cover their out-of-pocket pharmacy expenses.
Manufacturers have issued co-pay coupons since the mid-2000s, but they have become more common in recent years. The amount of prescriptions paid for using coupons reached 19 percent in 2016.
Most drugs that have co-pay coupons don’t have lower-cost generic alternatives. For the few that do, these alternatives may not suit the unique characteristics of a patient’s medical history or disease state. Or, a patient has already tried the less expensive option and found it ineffective.
Regardless of what may be available, doctors should be trusted to prescribe the most appropriate medication for their individual patients. And when a doctor prescribes a costly regimen, until recently, patients could depend upon co-pay coupons to count toward their yearly out-of-pocket deductible. Many patients relied on this arrangement to access their medications.
Yet for patients across the country, that reality is changing.
