Good morning, John. I'm a little bit pissed off right now. Ok, I'm very pissed off and
one of the only things that makes me feel better when I'm very pissed off is to reorganize
my bookshelf, so I'm gonna do that right now while I hopefully as calmly as possible explain
to you why I'm so pissed off.
Ok, so for those of you who don't know, I have a disease. It's a chronic illness, no
known cure for it, it's called ulcerative colitis and it has a whole bunch of horrible
symptoms that you do not want me to explain to you. If you really want to know you can
google it, but you probably just take my word for it. There's a medicine for ulcerative
colitis, it's called Asacol. I've been taking it for like five years. So the price of Asacol
kept going up and up and up and then a new drug came on the market called Apriso and
Apriso was basically the same drug for significantly cheaper. So I switched from Asacol to Apriso.
And then, very soon after I switched, the company that made Asacol created a new drug
called Asacol HD. (By the way, beautiful bookshelf all done.)
And they said to everybody, "Hey! Asacol HD is back, it's out, it's just in time for Asacol
to go generic and it's even better than Asacol. It's basically the exact same thing but we
can call it something different enough that we can extend our patent. And the kicker is
Asacol used to be three hundred dollars a month - this is only gonna be fifty dollars
a month!" And I was, of course, ecstatic.
And so for the last three months I've been on the same medication. It's been great, I
love it, I got my auto refill all worked out at the pharmacy so I walk in the pharmacy,
I don't even have to call beforehand, and they get it ready for me and she's like "I
got some news for you. I'm afraid that the price of this drug has gone up." And I'm like,
"That's not a big deal, it used to be three hundred dollars and now it's only fifty. How
much could it have gone up?" These numbers right here? That's how much it's gone up.
Only six hundred and twenty for me. Twelve hundred percent increase in one month!
So this is the patient savings card that lets me get Asacol for fifty dollars a month. So
I'm thinking maybe there's something I missed on the card, and there is. There's an expiration
date - April 1st, 2011. Which is funny, for a couple of reasons. One, because obviously,
ah, this card expired before April 1st, 2011. Second, April 1st, 2011 is April Fools Day.
So they're just playing a little joke on us! Playing a little joke on all the people who
rely on their medication to not have horrible, painful lives.
So this thing that the pharmacist gave me has a 1-800 number I can call. I call the
1-800 number and it says, "I'm sorry. Due to larger than usual call volume, you may
have an extremely long wait. Would you like to leave a message and one of our representatives
will get back to you ASAP?" And so I was like, "Fine, I'll leave a message." The answering
machine thing said "We're sorry, the mailbox you have called is currently full." You know
what the number should do? You should call and it'll be an automated message saying,
"Hello! Thank you for calling. We don't care."
So yeah, I'm pissed off and I can afford it. And I have extra medication left over. Think
of all the people who can't afford it and don't have extra medication left over. What
are those people going to do? Why is this ok? There's no reason the price of medication
should go up. It's the same medication that they've been making for twenty years. They
didn't try to contact my doctor so that we could work something out before the colossal
twelve hundred percent increase in the cost of the medication. And the listed expiration
date on the patient savings card, April Fools Day, was obviously just made up for fun.
I'm pissed off enough that I spent a good part of this weekend searching for ways to
contact Warner Chilcott. Warner Chilcott being the company that makes this medication. And
I managed, through the magic of the internet and some investigative techniques to find
the phone number of the CEO of Warner Chilcott, and I'm gonna call him right now. So I don't
expect Roger Boissonneault to call me back. I did however find his email address and emailed
him. I'm gonna put the email address in the description below and I encourage people to,
ah, think about this situation complexly, um, be civil, and ah, let him know how you
feel, ah, about what his company's done. Hopefully they'll change the policy. And if they don't,
John, Nerdfighteria, I think we should work together to make Warner Chilcott a, ah, a
new curse word.
The only reason companies will stop doing BS like this is if people stand up to it and
say, "That is not ok."
John, thank you very much. I would appreciate it if you in your next episode help me understand
this situation complexly and stop being so pissed off about it cause it's hard when you're
on the inside of something like this. And obviously there are much greater injustices
in the world, and at this point I feel like I should emphasize that this is not a me issue.
We can fix me. But that's not what we need to do. We need to fix this for everyone. We
need to say to these companies that it's not ok for them to Warner Chilcott us like that.
Hehehe, aha, I like the sound of that. Thanks everyone for your well wishes, John I look
forward to your video on Wednesday.