ADD – Phony Patents and the High Cost of Medical Care

There is renewed interest in reforming the health care system to control its ever increasing costs.  One place people might want to start looking is the phony “new” drugs that are granted patents.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that drug companies shouldn’t be allowed to profit, or to patent their discoveries.  But, when they pretend to invent a new drug and the government pretends the same just so they can continue to charge exorbitant prices for nothing, that is one source of waste that contributes to high health care costs.

I take Adderall for my ADD.  Actually, that isn’t true.  I take mixed amphetamine salts or whatever the generic equivalent is.  That saves me and my insurance company a lot of money.  This is completely fair because the makers of Adderall benefited from the full length of their patent on Adderall and have significant profits to show for it.  The slimy part is Adderall XR which is nothing more than Adderall (whose patent has already expired) coated using a common, widely known, non-original method to coat a pill so that it will release slowly in the stomach.  For this, they were granted a patent for a “new” drug and given another 7 years to charge higher brand name drug prices.  This is absurd.

If you take Adderall XR and pay a higher price for it, and are capable of taking your medication twice a day, ask your doctor to switch you to the generic non-XR formula.  In fact, ask him or her why they didn’t give you that in the first place.  You might not like the answer.

The generic is the same in every way as the XR release except that it is not coated.  That means you have to take it twice a day instead of once.  That is it.  If that saves you a $20 co-pay every month, you could put an extra $240 in your IRA, get a nice dinner, or do something else useful for yourself, and that makes a lot more sense than shelling out extra money for a drug that everyone pretends is new.