Chronic diseases need long term treatments that need to be taken no matter what. Acute pains demand for immediate cure and attention. But both of them call for the usage of drugs and all sorts of medication programs that are not at all cheap. In fact, 1 of 10 Americans does not take his treatment because of the high price. This information was taken from a health report this Thursday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the cost of drugs affects the same people for whom scientists all over the world have struggled years in developing a treatment. As a result, patients come back to their doctor after checking the price of their medication at the pharmacy, in order to ask him for a cheaper alternative. The percentage is quite big, 15% of them do so. In addition, 2% of the sick have bought prescription drugs from another country, even though the regulations are different between states and what is regulated in one, is not mandatory to be regulated in another. More than 4% of the patients have tried alternative therapies, being advised by a different doctor or maybe even friends or family.
Report authors Robin Cohen and Maria Villarroel, a health statistician at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the chief of the special projects branch at NCHS said that
“These people are skipping doses, taking less medication or delaying filling prescriptions. […] People who do not take their medication as prescribed have more hospitalizations, emergency room visits and an increased burden of their illness.”
The percentage of those who didn’t take their medication because of their high cost is most likely to be under the age of 65. In fact, the number of the people in this category was twice larger than the ones that are over 65 years old. Also, filling a prescription in order to save some money was reported about 7% of those under 64 years old and about 3% of those that are of this age or older.
Insurance patients are a different category and a very important one too. The percentages are bigger and scarier: 14 percent of the uninsured, skip their medication 100%; 6 percent of those with private insurance also fall into the same category.
In conclusion, the report published its findings as a NCHS Data Brief and overall, the facts show that 7.8% of the adults do not respect their treatment plan because of high costs that they are not ready to spend.
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