Free Drug Samples May End Up Costing More

Uninsured patients tend to stay on these more expensive brand name drugs, study found

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

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FRIDAY, Sept. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors who hand out drug companies' free samples to uninsured patients may actually be costing those patients more money over the long term, a new study finds.

That's because doctors tend to continue patients on the more expensive brand name drug in the sample, rather than switch them over to a cheaper generic later on, researchers say.

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"When physicians had access to brand name drug samples, they were much more likely to give uninsured patients prescriptions for that drug," said lead author Dr. David P. Miller, an internal medicine physician at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. "But when giving out drug samples is not an option, the same physicians are almost three times more likely to prescribe generic drugs to the uninsured. And generic drugs are often much cheaper than their brand-name counterparts."

"So, given that for many conditions there are very effective generic options, I think any patient who wants to save money on their medications is better off asking for an effective generic prescription rather than asking their physician for a free drug sample," Miller advised. "Because while the sample might be free in the short term, they might end up paying a lot more money in the long term."

The research team outlined its conclusions in the September issue of the Southern Medical Journal.

The current finding follows on the heels of a University of Chicago Medical Center study released this past spring that indicated that patients who receive free drug samples go on to incur significantly higher out-of-pocket expenses when filling their prescriptions than those who never get such freebies. In that instance, three-quarters of the patients had private insurance coverage.

In the new study, the researchers spent 18 months tracking prescriptions written for uninsured and/or Medicaid patients cared for by more than 70 physicians. All of the doctors worked at a large university-affiliated internal medicine practice.

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