Biden administration unveils first 10 drugs subject to Medicare price negotiations

[4lbs]

48. My mother was prescribed Eliquis some years ago.

At the time, the cost was around $800 USD per monthly prescription. That was for 30 tablets for someone with no health insurance, and paying full price.

However, because my parents were both on MediCare (they were retired in their 80s at the time), and had additional health insurance to cover the "gaps", the co-pay was only $10 per month.

Nevertheless, had they not had this extra insurance, the cost would have been hundreds of dollars per month. Pretty much offsetting the monthly cost of the extra health insurance, just on this one drug alone.

Since Eliquis is a brand name, and relatively new (compared to say, aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen), there is no cheaper generic version available. It's name-brand price or you are SOL.

However, she turned out to be allergic to anything blood-thinner related, and the Eliquis caused her to have nosebleeds and really didn't help all that much. She stopped taking it after 5 days, and the nosebleeds stopped within 24 hours of that.

Hopefully this will at least drop the price from hundreds of dollars per month for regular MediCare to maybe $50 per month, or something reasonable.