Asthmatics with an industry sitting on their chests: Do Pharmaceutical Companies rig the market?

Two days ago I went to the drug store, but went away without my meds. They told me I was in "the Gap" again. The gap is slang for "We (insurance companies) don't really cover your meds now, we just seem to."

From August 1 through (I don't know when but, I think it is sometime in) January, my drug insurance runs out. Chances are yours does too. If you are on asthma medications or other high priced drugs, and especially if another household member is also on prescription drugs, you know what I mean.  The higher your drug costs, the sooner you enter the gap. And the sooner you enter the gap, the happier drug companies must be.

Who invented the "gap" anyway? The gap seems particularly sinister for asthmatics and others, because it allows insurance companies to give the illusion of drug coverage. What it really does is allow drug companies to avoid paying for the higher priced meds, without seeming to do so. The Pharmacy formularies may well seem to include a wide variety of drugs, but any higher priced medications  will drive you into the gap well before the end of the year. In my case, the gap begins around the end of July, so this means that I really do not have coverage for almost half of the year. I assume many others are in the same boat with me.

Asthmatics have a hard time: Some, who stop taking their drugs while trying to wait out the gap, could be at increased risk. 

When asthma kicks in and it feels like someone is sitting on your chest, that someone may be the pharmaceutical industry. 

Drugs in America are higher than other place, but you cannot buy them there, because laws (lobbied for by the drug industry) prevent it: When asthma kicks in and it feels like someone is sitting on your chest, that someone may be the pharmaceutical industry. The following quote is from a New York Times article entitled "The Soaring Cost of a Simple Breath":

Pharmaceutical companies also buttress high prices by choosing to sell a medicine by prescription, rather than over the counter, so that insurers cover a price tag that would be unacceptable to consumers paying full freight. They even pay generic drug makers not to produce cut-rate competitors in acontroversial scheme called pay for delay.

Thanks in part to the $250 million last year spent on lobbying for pharmaceutical and health products — more than even the defense industry — the government allows such practices. Lawmakers in Washington have forbidden Medicare, the largest government purchaser of health care, to negotiate drug prices. Unlike its counterparts in other countries, the United States Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which evaluates treatments for coverage by federal programs, is not allowed to consider cost comparisons or cost-effectiveness in its recommendations. And importation of prescription medicines from abroad is illegal, even personal purchases from mail-order pharmacies.
“Our regulatory and approval system seems constructed to achieve high-priced outcomes,” said Dr. Peter Bach, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “We don’t give any reason for drug makers to charge less.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If you are "in the gap" I would like to see your comments below.

Also, if you have a favorite source for your asthma medication, please share that with us.

If your doctor has prescribed a lower cost asthma controller medication that is equally effective as the pricey alternatives, please share that as well.

Thanks