With an eye on the food allergy community as a unique group of consumers since 2008, we're on a quest to find and share ways to continue enjoying the good things in life.


13 March 2012

Food Allergy News: Over the counter Epipens?

Did you hear about this? According to a March 9 article entitled FDA considers putting more drugs over the counter in The Boston Globe, the FDA is contemplating some new initiatives, including possibly making Epipens available over the counter. On the one hand, that sounds good--epipens would be more easily available, I think.  On the other hand, our health insurance covers the epipens now. How much will the OTC epipens cost? I'm not really sure if it is a good or bad thing to have epipens available OTC. What do you think?

UPDATE: Thanks to the wonder of Twitter, just heard from @AllergicGirl that @WayneShreffler tweeted about this very topic a couple of days ago. He provided a link to a page regarding the upcoming hearing on this topic. The government is soliciting comments, so there is your chance to give your two cents! Here is the link! Thanks to @AllergicGirl and @WayneShreffler for the tip!

3 comments:

Jessica said...

This one is tough. It is nice having the epipen covered by insurance and it is still easy to obtain through prescription.

I think the price for an epipen is in the $70 range.

Is it really necessary to be made available OTC with a few pharmacies being open 24 hours, depending on where you live?

Interested to see how this turns out.


Jessica
with http://www.foodallergiesrecipebox.com/

Dorothy-Life With Boys said...

For our family, epi pens cost a $50 copay PER PEN. If the cost were to be less than that, I'd be all for it. However, we use our pre-tax healthcare dollars to purchase those $50 epi pens, so if they were made OTC, we could end up paying more.

Andrew Jondahl said...

As someone with food allergies, but no health insurance, I welcome the OTC epi pen. My last trip to see an allergist, which consisted of a 20-minute consult and a blood test, cost $750. That's an expensive epi pen.