{"id":296,"date":"2009-03-10T09:50:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-10T14:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=296"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:31:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:31:11","slug":"unwelcome-visitor-cost-of-hiv-meds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/unwelcome-visitor-cost-of-hiv-meds\/2009\/03\/10\/","title":{"rendered":"Unwelcome Visitor:  Cost of HIV Meds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/03\/massachusetts1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-298 alignright\" title=\"massachusetts\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/03\/massachusetts1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"235\" \/><\/a>Those of us who practice HIV medicine in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wikiality.com\/Taxachusetts\" target=\"_blank\">Taxachusetts<\/a> (warning, click link at your peril) live a pretty charmed life, at least so far as getting HIV medications paid for.\u00a0 Due to an incredibly generous AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), rare is the patient who faces financial barriers getting his or her drugs.<\/p>\n<p>(By the way, we abbreviate it &#8220;HDAP&#8221; here, not ADAP.\u00a0 And we treat early syphilis with two shots of penicillin, not one.\u00a0 And we voted for McGovern.\u00a0 And we drive on the left.)<\/p>\n<p>But the recent downturn in the economy has changed this usually comfortable situation in the Bay State.<\/p>\n<p>A patient of mine called to tell me that his co-pay for a 3 month supply of his antivirals is now nearly $2000.\u00a0 Another one has simply stopped coming to appointments, as his wife&#8217;s insurance has such a large deductible that he will only agree to blood tests, not an actual office visit.\u00a0 A third asked me whether he would be better off stopping enoxaparin or his HIV meds, since he couldn&#8217;t afford both.<\/p>\n<p>I am sure things are much worse in other States &#8212; after all, Houston&#8217;s Joe Gathe initially tried lopinavir\/r monotherapy since he reasoned that <em>some <\/em>ART was better than <em>none<\/em>, and his patients couldn&#8217;t afford triple-therapy.<\/p>\n<p>Where is this headed?\u00a0 It&#8217;s tough to make predictions (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.workinghumor.com\/quotes\/yogi_berra.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">especially about the future<\/a>), but <em><\/em>I suspect that when 3TC and saquinavir become generic, we might be turning to them more often than we&#8217;d previously thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those of us who practice HIV medicine in Taxachusetts (warning, click link at your peril) live a pretty charmed life, at least so far as getting HIV medications paid for.\u00a0 Due to an incredibly generous AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), rare is the patient who faces financial barriers getting his or her drugs. (By the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,8],"tags":[15,38,47,235,360,410,423,435,436,570,625,830,897],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-3tc","tag-adap","tag-aids-drug-assistance-program","tag-cost","tag-financial-barriers","tag-hdap","tag-hiv","tag-hiv-medications","tag-hiv-medicine","tag-lopinavir","tag-monotherapy","tag-saquinavir","tag-taxachusetts"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}