Chris had a visit with his ENT a couple of weeks ago. He needed a check up to renew his medication and make sure that the CPAP he uses to sleep is still effective
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Prior Auths on drugs are super common from all insurance payers. Like seriously, seriously common.
In this case your doc may know best, but from experience I can tell you that they often write for the new hotness based on a visit from a drug rep- not necessarily because it's any more effective.
Right off the top of my head, I can think of an example:
Claritin was an older allergy med that works for millions. Claritin ended up going OTC and the patent wore off, allowing generics to take over the market. The company that made the brand Claritin decided to make a "new" drug called Clarinex. It's newer! It's better! It's generic name is desloratadine, the damn thing is a metabolite of loratadine...which means your body turns Clarinex into Claritin once it's absorbed by the body.
A very similar thing happened with Prilosec (omeprazole) and Nexium (esomeprazole).
This is an unfortunate opinion. I write for what I think will work and follow standard of care. I don't know anyone who makes medical decisions based on what is stated above. And I know thousands of doctors. Prior authorizations are annoying and often involve not following standard of care and making th patient go through unnecessary steps. Did you know most pharm companies don't count a trial of ibuprofen if it hasn't been in the last 90 days? Or that to get antacids approved the trial has to be for 3 months (usually 3 months of Prilosec followed by 3 months of Prevacid followed by 3 months of protonix)? Or that I have to prescribe QVAR for 3 months to Copd patient before I can get symbicort approved - and QVAR IS NOT EVEN FDA APPROVED FOR COPD. So I have someone who can't breathe and they have to use something that doesn't work for 3 months before the get the med that works. It is ridiculous, and the type of docs described above are not the norm. Docs want you to get better. This is an annoying job - there are better ways to make
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Also the regarding the above "eso" and "des" are enantiomers of a compound, not metabolites. We call those "me too" drugs and rarely use them. They are different compounds though, some work better (pristiq is desvenlafaxine and Effexor is venlafaxine), some are just another option. Did you know generic medications only have to be 80% similar to the brand compound to use the generic name? So if someone says loratadine does not work as well as Claritin the brand, the patient is not lying to me, it is probably true. If I owed you $100 and gave you $85 instead you would notice the difference...
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In this case your doc may know best, but from experience I can tell you that they often write for the new hotness based on a visit from a drug rep- not necessarily because it's any more effective.
Right off the top of my head, I can think of an example:
Claritin was an older allergy med that works for millions. Claritin ended up going OTC and the patent wore off, allowing generics to take over the market. The company that made the brand Claritin decided to make a "new" drug called Clarinex. It's newer! It's better! It's generic name is desloratadine, the damn thing is a metabolite of loratadine...which means your body turns Clarinex into Claritin once it's absorbed by the body.
A very similar thing happened with Prilosec (omeprazole) and Nexium (esomeprazole).
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