Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18618

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Electronic Source

Hobson K
More Than a Quarter of Prescription Takers Cut Corners to Save Money
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2010 Aug 24
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/08/24/more-than-a-quarter-of-prescription-takers-cut-corners-to-save-money/

Full text:

More than a quarter of Americans who take prescription drugs have skipped doses, split pills or cut other corners to save money in the last year, according to a new study by Consumer Reports.

(The survey also asked prescription-drug users what they thought about the pharma industry’s influence on their physicians – more on that in a sec.)

The WSJ has written that U.S. consumers are cutting back on their use of health-care services, which is likely due to the state of the economy but may also reflect a more lingering trend as consumers pick up a bigger percentage of their medical costs.

This telephone survey, of 1,154 adults who currently take at least one prescription drug, found that 27% “failed to comply” with their prescriptions in some way during the past year. Most commonly that involved skipping a prescription fill, taking an expired medication, skipping a dose, splitting pills or sharing a prescription with someone else.

That kind of cutback was most common among people who were under age 65 and didn’t have prescription-drug coverage.

For 64% of respondents, the first they heard about the cost of a prescription was when they picked it up from a pharmacist. About half agreed with the notion that doctors don’t consider a patient’s ability to pay when they prescribe a drug.

Now, to the pharma-industry influence questions … nearly 70% of those surveyed agreed, to some extent, with the notion that pharma companies have too much influence on physicians’ prescription decisions. (It should be noted that with this type of question, phrasing is everything.)

Some 47% agreed with the idea that physicians’ prescription choices are influenced by pharma-industry gifts; they were also concerned about the practice of rewarding physicians who write a lot of prescriptions for a given drug (81%) and paying doctors for testimonials or as spokespersons (72%).

Consumers themselves aren’t immune from pharma-industry influence: 20% reported requesting from a doctor a drug they’d heard about via direct-to-consumer advertising. Of those, nearly 59% came away with a prescription. Two-thirds have received free samples from their physician – and people with high incomes and prescription drug coverage were the most likely to get them.