What’s Happening with Prescription Drugs

By Debra Gordon

Richard Evans takes so many prescription medications that he keeps them in a small bookcase in what he calls his “medication station.” The 57-year-old freelance indexer takes two different types of insulin and the oral medication Glucophage for diabetes, testosterone therapy for chronic fatigue, an anti-inflammatory and Questran for ulcerative colitis, two inhalers for his burgeoning asthma and a sleeping aid for his insomnia.

But wait! There’s more: Hyzaar for high blood pressure, Nexium for reflux, Synthroid because he had Grave’s disease. And that’s not counting the occasional antibiotic and decongestant if he gets acutely ill.

For all this, Evans is lucky. Retired from IBM, his former employer provides drug coverage through an HMO. Since he orders his prescriptions through a mail-order pharmacy and receives a 90-day supply at a time, his out-of-pocket expenses for prescription medications average about $210 a month.

But with many large employers dropping or severely limiting health coverage for retirees, increasing co-payments and tightening up on prescription drug coverage, Evans knows his luck could run out at any time.

And then he might be like the one in five Americans aged 18 to 64 who, the Center for Studying Health System Change found, leave at least one prescription unfilled because they can’t afford it. The numbers are even worse for Hispanics and African-Americans, with more than one in three blacks and one in four Hispanics reporting they couldn’t fill all their prescriptions because of cost.

Overall, an estimated 65 million Americans – one-third of them Medicare beneficiaries – have no prescription drug coverage. And, as anyone who has ever paid $120 for a month’s supply of the stomach drug Nexium knows, that hurts.