tldr: Green air act raised the cost of asthma inhalers by 1,200%.
Prescription asthma inhalers had cheap generic brands available for over a decade, but they used CFCs, which have been banned by the clean air act. They were allowed to continue to be sold with CFCs as an essential medical need until someone came out with an alternative.
A drug company released a CFC free inhaler in 2004, leading to the complete ban of CFCs in albuteral based asthma inhalers as of 2008. Due to the FDA testing process, even though the active drug is the same, the whole thing is still protected under patent and by the FDA as though it were a completely new drug, meanwhile all the generics were taken off the market since there is now a CFC free alternative.
So green air legislation is costing me to the tune of $60 inhalers for each refill rather than the old $5 per refill inhalers, and this will persist until all the applicable patents run out, and the competitors start producing a sufficient supply of CFC free generics. It's also lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical company that happens to have been first to push their product through FDA testing. The patents ran out in 2009, but three years later there are still only two companies producing it, they are not doing so in a competitive manner, and it still costs $60 per inhaler.
While my insurance doesn't cover it, many insurances do cover some of this cost, which means this is one of the many reasons your premiums have gone up in the last decade. You also no longer have to wonder why untreated asthma is so prevalent among the poor - even if they can use a free clinic no one's going to pay for the medicine.
Approximately 250,000 people die prematurely each year from asthma (3,300 in the US alone). Almost all of these deaths are avoidable. I'm not saying this to suggest that these deaths are due to the increased cost of the medication, but to assert that this is not a minor disease (1 in 9 have it generally, some minority populations are 1 in 6) and access to this medication can prevent many of these deaths.
Yay for the ozone though - that's a pretty big win right there.
Prescription asthma inhalers had cheap generic brands available for over a decade, but they used CFCs, which have been banned by the clean air act. They were allowed to continue to be sold with CFCs as an essential medical need until someone came out with an alternative.
A drug company released a CFC free inhaler in 2004, leading to the complete ban of CFCs in albuteral based asthma inhalers as of 2008. Due to the FDA testing process, even though the active drug is the same, the whole thing is still protected under patent and by the FDA as though it were a completely new drug, meanwhile all the generics were taken off the market since there is now a CFC free alternative.
So green air legislation is costing me to the tune of $60 inhalers for each refill rather than the old $5 per refill inhalers, and this will persist until all the applicable patents run out, and the competitors start producing a sufficient supply of CFC free generics. It's also lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical company that happens to have been first to push their product through FDA testing. The patents ran out in 2009, but three years later there are still only two companies producing it, they are not doing so in a competitive manner, and it still costs $60 per inhaler.
While my insurance doesn't cover it, many insurances do cover some of this cost, which means this is one of the many reasons your premiums have gone up in the last decade. You also no longer have to wonder why untreated asthma is so prevalent among the poor - even if they can use a free clinic no one's going to pay for the medicine.
Approximately 250,000 people die prematurely each year from asthma (3,300 in the US alone). Almost all of these deaths are avoidable. I'm not saying this to suggest that these deaths are due to the increased cost of the medication, but to assert that this is not a minor disease (1 in 9 have it generally, some minority populations are 1 in 6) and access to this medication can prevent many of these deaths.
Yay for the ozone though - that's a pretty big win right there.
