Reaching for Your Wallet, er, Inhaler
photo: Retinafunk
The price of your (and everyone else’s) inhaler is about to triple…
Wisebread is doing a little analysis on human cost versus environmental impact when it comes to inhalers. You see, inhalers still use CFC’s (bad for the environment; hole in the ozone layer and all that) to give their medicine its motivation, and that’s all about to change to the tune of a $1.35 billion dollar annual cost to inhaler users.
The cost of an Albuterol inhaler is going to nearly triple, due to the re-patenting of the propellant used in the most common drugs used to reduce the inflammation associated with an asthma attack.
Traditionally, the propellant used in most inhalers (and many other day-to-day items and appliances) were CFCs, which were found to be detrimental to the ozone. Although CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) were phased out of other products, they remain in prescription inhalers. That’s all about to change, however, and the new propellant, HFA-134a, has been used in part to re-patent the inhaler design, which went generic (and became affordable) back in 1989.
For people with decent health insurance, this doesn’t mean much, but for people who pay out-of-pocket for medicine, this is going to be a big hit in the wallet. The difference between $13.50 and $39.50 is striking, especially for people who use more than one inhaler per month.
Being asthmatic just got more expensive – Wisebread
