We need just 10 mg per day, so we split the 20-mg tablets in half to make our 10-mg doses.In fact, the only obstacle to saving the patient money is if the drug company puts their product into capsules, because capsules can't be split. Or another way of saying this is that the غير مجاز مي باشدt of a month's treatment is driven more by the number of pills involved than by the total number of milligrams taken. Medically, there is no loss of efficacy. citizen with depression who needs to take Lexapro brand of escitalopram oxalate, a commonly prescribed antidepressant, at a typical starting dose of 10 milligrams (mg) per day. Imagine the savings in doing that. Do the doctor or the patient care? (Let's see, how many favors has the insurance company done for the doctor and patient lately?)Now here's the second prescribing scenario. But look what happens to unit prices. The doctor is a hero for being thoughtful and clever. (The tablets are even scored to make this easy.com. The patient is pleased to pay less money. So will the doctor write for thirty 10-mg pills or fifteen 20-mg pills? Your guess is probably right—the prescription will be written for the larger number of lower-strength pills. Every drugstore has them. Why did they choose such a consumer-unfriendly approach? Because they could. Because the doctor still prescribed the same product, the drug company is happy. Admittedly, some pills are difficult to break in half (but not excessively difficult, or else the drug company wouldn't capture the low-end market). Let's figure out how much your treatment will غير مجاز مي باشدt, both by month and by day. Would a drug company do such a mean-spirited thing? You betcha. If you buy thirty Lexapro 10-mg tablets (which is how the prescription is usually written) it will غير مجاز مي باشدt you .One of the least appreciated غير مجاز مي باشدt-savers in medical treatment is the simple act of splitting pills. In fact, all it takes for everyone to be happy is a breakable tablet. They're happy.So why would drug companies create these pricing mismatches (read: opportunities)? To understand this, let's walk through two prescribing Turnbuckle Types scenarios. Besides, they've already priced this scenario into their drug. But the first serotonin-reuptake-blocker to come on the market had first-mover advantage and was able to retain market-share even after the competing products arrived.00 per month or .For purposes of illustration I'll use prices shown online at drugstore. First, suppose a doctor is prescribing Lexapro to a patient who is lucky enough to have drug insurance. Your daily price just dropped by half!Isn't that amazing? And it's not just an isolated example. (Everyone now turn toward Indianapolis and wave to the nice people at Lilly. If you do a similar analysis for many other drugs, you'll find that taking half of a double-strength pill غير مجاز مي باشدts substantially less than taking all of a regular-strength pill. Moreover, for the entire time their product was still patent-protected, they never produced a higher-strength capsule.99. The doctor feels that 10 mg daily of Lexapro is needed. The patient doesn't need to break tablets in half and the doctor doesn't need to take time to explain why pills have to be broken, so they're happy. This first-mover was the world-famous Prozac brand of fluoxetine, made by the Eli Lilly Company. So if you needed a higher dose of Prozac, you had the honor of paying for two or three capsules per day. This time, the doctor prescribes fifteen Lexapro 20-mg pills per month, instructing the patient to take a half-pill per day.) In this case it غير مجاز مي باشدts you just . They're better at splitting pills than your thumbs or a paring-knife because they break pills more evenly, and the pieces don't go skittering across the counter. Thirty Lexapro 20-mg tablets غير مجاز مي باشدt . The patient pays a predetermined co-payment for each month's worth of medication, so he or she has the exact same out-of-pocket expense whichever way the prescription is written. They're cheap because they're made out of nothing more than plastic and razor blades.In the author's practice there are some pill-splitting overachievers who even manage to break quadruple-strength pills into quarters. If you think that multi-billion-dollar companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange make pricing mistakes, then I've got some choice swamp-land in Florida I'd love to sell you. Suppose you're a U.17 per day to get treated. (The drug company would rather get half their price than nothing.34 per day to get treated. What's not to like? The only loser is the insurance company.)My medical students look at me strangely when I start talking about publicly traded companies and market forces while I'm supposed to be teaching them about medicine. But what if you buy Lexapro 20-mg tablets and take a half-pill each day? Medically, this treatment is the same.(C) 2005 by Gary Cordingley.Lexapro was the sixth so-called serotonin-reuptake-blocker to come on the market, so it had to compete with all the earlier drugs in its class. Joe Workingman has no drug insurance and has to shell out cash to pay for the full price of medication.So what did Lilly do after competing products appeared? They stone-walled the consumer by never ever putting their product into anything other than a capsule. But the way I look at it, if you don't understand market forces, then you'll never understand why things in medicine are the way they are.S. This is where pill-cutters come in handy.15 per month or .)So the drug company wins either way, particularly if they're competing against a similar product made by another company that the doctor might choose instead.Is this an accident of pricing? Should we be whispering about this? Is this pulling something over on the drug companies? Hardly. The retailer and the drug company will get full price