Wellness

[Mindy D]

As of late, the once cheap price of antibiotics--not the new ones still under patent-- but the older ones, available as generics has SKYROCKETED. I have a friend with a very rare skin disorder who needs antibiotics to control infection in skin lesions, before he can have surgery to remove the lesions. For two months, he was doxycycline, which is one type of tetracycline that has been around for years and used to cost a $12.00 copay. He had to pay a $300.00 copay for 10 day supply with AVMED. I called our long-time, trusted pharmacist about the pricing and he told me it was because there was a manufacturing shortage, worldwide, causing the price jump. After talking to the pharmacist I did more research online and found that this was going on and I checked prices with all the chains in my area. Now, my friend is on the generic version of Levaquin, another formerly cheap antibiotic. I found prices online for it at the dosage he needs and the full price, not a copay was under $ 50.00 a year ago. Well guess how much the same thing is now, for his copay,only. $800.00 a month. He receives disability benefits (just started to get them for his horrible condition) of $800.00 a month! If things keep going up I think that we won't see over prescription of antibiotics anymore because no one can afford to use them. This will begin to solve the resistance problem. By the way, there is no shortage of this antibiotic.