My medical oncologist wrote down yesterday that she would prepare a prescription for Arimidex for me to pick up at one of the local pharmacies so it would be ready when I needed it in a couple weeks. I had forgotten my WA insurance carrier has a mail order arm of the prescription plan and what a great thing that turned out to be!
When I first went to my WA website in the wee hours last night, I signed up for access to be able to view my medical claims, and that's not for the faint of heart I assure you. While looking around, I also signed up for my pharmacy access to manage my prescriptions on line and started looking for my new drug of choice...anastazole or brand name, Arimidex.
Searching through the prescriptions I finally found it, 90 day supply only $1037.95! Yep...you read it correctly and that was the mail order prescription. To get it locally, was around $1337.95, when I checked Walgreen's and other pharmacies. The insurance companies consider Aromatase Inhibitors (Letrozole, Anastrozole) to be "maintenance and/or specialty drugs" so there is no shared expense. The whole thing would have been mine. I know it's my life we're talking about here, but with a $300 car payment for another year and a half, I couldn't help but compare my pill to my car. Good grief!
My heart started racing, I'm certain my blood pressure rose AND I had already decided that I wasn't so certain I was going to agree to do the aromatase inhibitors...leave it to me to have to have the fashionable drug at a champagne price!
Funny thing though, I went back to the insurance listing and noticed there were generic boxes underneath the names of the drugs on the Wellpartner site. I clicked on the Generic Box and saw the price: "$10.00 for 90 days". What? There has to be a catch. Pay that to the insurance company and then I'd likely get a sneaky bill later. Come on, I mean the other was over $1000.00!
Now here is the "do you believe in miracles?" part. I started wondering if my medical oncologist would allow me to take a generic version. I went to my search engine and typed in "Is generic Arimidex ok?" just to see what would come up. You are NOT going to believe what I found!
Up popped a post that had been sent in to a oncology nurse practitioner on Health Center, MyBreastCancerNetwork.com, and that was the topic of discussion. "Sharon, there's no generic Arimidex..." is how the first post started. There were posts to follow that were talking about Canadian pharmacies and ordering through them. I know someone who sometimes deals with orders of medicines from Canada who may have helped. But when I reached the bottom of the page, I found what I was hoping for!
Yes, as of last week, there are a number of FDA-approved generics for Arimidex that will cut the cost just about in half or less. Here are the details:
"June 30 - Generic versions of the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole have been approved in the United States, now that the branded product, Arimidex (AstraZeneca), has come off patent.
"The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 11 generic versions of anastrozole on June 28 from the following companies: Accord Healthcare Inc, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd, Natco Pharma Ltd, Roxane Laboratories Inc, Sandoz Inc, Stason Pharmaceuticals Inc, Synthon Pharmaceuticals Inc, TEVA Pharmaceuticals USA, Three Rivers Pharmaceuticals LLC, Watson Laboratories Inc, and Zydus Pharmaceuticals USA Inc."
I then took another minute and went to the BreastCancer.org site and found a thread where women were specifically discussing where they had purchased the generic brand. They listed different pharmacies as well as WalMart, Costco (the least expensive and reasonable so far) and all the things they had encountered.
I contacted Wellpartner this afternoon. They assured me their distributor gets the supply from a US Pharmaceutical company and yes, now that the generic version is available, my cost really would be $10.00, every 3 months.
A little reading and once again, I have learned and benefitted from the experience of others. As you can see, I am certainly NOT the only out there asking questions, seeking answers, and sharing with others so we all have it just a little easier. It is an incredible network...thank goodness for the computer and the web in which we are all connected!
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