Pharmaceuticals are amazing stuff. You can bitch and moan about their costs, side effects, or the number of them you’re taking, but what they’ve done to extend life and improve its quality is truly remarkable.

And for all the bad raps they get, I salute the pharmaceutical industry, and those who work anonymously in labs around the world, to bring us these miracles.

But drug companies also do absolutely weird crap. One thing that’s recently driven me nuts is the trend away from drugs of real value toward what I call “drugs of convenience” (DoC).

What is a DoC? Let’s take “Sukitol.” Sukitol is dosed twice-a-day. Taking a pill twice-a-day is something most of us can remember to do. Sukitol costs, say, $2 a pill. So a month of Sukitol is $120 (these numbers are just for example, obviously).

But, like all drugs, Sukitol’s patent is going to expire. Then it will become a cheap generic (sukazolamide), and the price will drop to $0.20 per pill. So a month will now cost $12.

About 3 months before the generic comes out, the Sukitol rep shows up at my door. He now carries once-daily Sukitol-ER! Yes, now you only need to take Sukitol-ER once-a-day! And they trumpet this like it’s a major freakin’ medical breakthrough.

And they no longer carry plain old Sukitol samples. So if I want to start someone on Sukitol, I need to use Sukitol-ER, and when it goes generic in a few months, the patient ain’t gonna want twice-daily sukazolamide.

Sukitol-ER is priced at $4 a pill, so a month is, again, $120.

When the generic comes out, the patient’s insurance has a choice: pay $12/month for twice-daily sukazolamide, or $120/month for Sukitol-ER. That $108 difference becomes pretty significant if there are, say, 1 million people on the drug.

Now we get into numbers. The patient’s insurance co-pay is $5/month for sukazolamide OR $40/month for Sukitol-ER. The insurance company is hoping that by putting more financial burden on the patient, he’ll decide to go with the cheap generic.

But the drug companies have a counter to this- They’ve introduced coupons, also called “co-pay cards” or “patient loyalty cards” that give the patient $40 a month off the copay. So by using these things the patient gets Sukitol-ER free, while the insurance company is still getting dinged for the rest of the cost.

Now, given my never-ending battles with insurance companies, I don’t often sympathize with them. But here I do: the patient is getting the gold mine, and the insurance is getting the shaft. And, of course, this situation increases health care costs for ALL of us, because the insurance has to raise my premiums to pay for the fact that somebody just can’t bear the thought of having to take their pill twice-a-day instead of once.

My friends who are pharmacists also hate having to deal with the reimbursement issues on the co-pay cards, but that’s another story. If they want to comment on it, they’re welcome to.

But the fun doesn’t end there. Let’s take a real drug: Flexeril (generic name cyclobenzaprine). This muscle relaxant came to market quite a while back, and consequently has been available as a generic for many years. It’s taken as a 10mg pill 3 times a day, and the generic is dirt cheap. Like a few pennies per pill.

So roughly 10 years ago, LONG after generic 10mg cyclobenzaprine was commonly available, some enterprising drug company actually was able to patent it AGAIN as a 5mg pill. They claimed it was less sedating at the lower dose, and therefore constituted a whole new drug.

And so it went to market as expensive Flexeril 5mg, because heaven forbid you should actually suggest a patient buy cheap generic 10mg cyclobenzaprine and break them in half!

Eventually the patent wore off on Flexeril 5mg, too, and it went generic, along with the 10mg. So what happened next? Another drug company actually re-patented it at a 7.5mg dose and renamed it Fexmid. I am not making this up.

Still another company has developed a once daily form of it called Amrix. So from 1 drug we now have 4 freakin’ patents.

Here’s another one: Doxepin is an ancient (by drug standards) antidepressant. It’s been around since the 1960’s. So it’s dirt cheap, and comes in pills of 10mg and up. BUT some pharmaceutical company, after 40 years on the market, has re-patented it as a 3mg or 6mg sleep aid called Silenor. So you can buy 30 days worth of 10mg pills at Target for $4 OR you can pay the same amount per pill for Silenor in a smaller size. Step right up and buy this bridge!

But the fun goes on! One that really chaps me is the bizarre trend of combining 2 old, cheap generics (some of which are even available over-the counter) to create a new, overpriced drug.

Other companies combine an existing generic with a soon-to-be generic as a desperate way of getting a few last bucks out of it. Because heaven knows it’s such a serious burden to have to take 2 pills at the same time instead of 1. This list includes Treximet (Imitrex + Naprosyn), Vimovo (Naprosyn + Nexium), Caduet (Norvasc + Lipitor), Vytorin (Zocor + Zetia), Symbyax (Prozax + Zyprexa), and many more.

No matter how much pharmaceutical companies try to portray these drugs as major medical breakthroughs, they aren’t!

I just can’t help but think that the money spent on creating them would be better spent on more novel drugs with greater long-term potential (and profit, since I admit that’s the key) to help people.

“Doctor Grumpy” is a neurologist who blogs at Doctor Grumpy in the House.

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