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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Limiting usage for some products in the US, where prices aren’t regulated.Since 2010, the number of Viagra prescriptions filled in the US has fallen 42 percent to about 5 million a year. Meanwhile, prescriptions for Cialis, which now has a popular daily pill option, have gone up slightly, according to health data firm QuintilesIMS.Popular women’s estrogen products such as Vagifem vaginal tablets and Estrace cream also have seen prescriptions decline in recent years. Addyi, only on the market for a year, has had dismal sales.Dr. Lauren Streicher offers women four treatment options, and most pick Vagifem. A month’s supply costs $170 and insurance coverage is limited. A generic version, Yuvafem, just launched at a slightly cheaper price.“They go to their pharmacy and see how much it costs, and then they call me up and say, ‘I can’t do it,'” says Streicher, director of the Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause at Northwestern University’s medical school in Chicago.But not being able to have sex “is a deal-breaker in a lot of relationships,” she adds.The drugs’ makers insist list prices far exceed the negotiated prices insurers pay them and say they price products based on their value. According to the companies, nearly all their customers are insured. Pfizer says most insured Viagra users pay $6 to $8 per pill, for instance. Patients unwilling to forego sex, doctors say, split pills or otherwise ration medicines, beg for scarce samples, or seek copay discount coupons. Men with enlarged prostates can request Cialis because it’s also approved for that condition, usually with insurance coverage. Some women make do with over-the-counter lubricants.Many shop for price, which can vary widely by pharmacy.Others take a big risk, buying “herbal Viagra” at gas stations or ordering Viagra online from “Canadian pharmacies” that likely sell counterfeit drugs made in poor countries, says Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of San Diego Sexual Medicine.Some doctors have gotten inventive.Dr. Nachum Katlowitz, head of urology at New York’s Staten Island University Hospital, offers an alternative costing about $1 per pill at some pharmacies. The active ingredient in Viagra — sildenafil — is also in Pfizer’s now-generic blood pressure pill Revatio but at one-fifth the dose.One of his patients, a 62-year-old hospital technician, takes several of the blood pressure pills before sex.“I couldn’t afford it if I had to pay for Viagra,” says Robert, who asked that his last name not be used to protect his
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