THIS one took my advice!
I have a long time customer, I’ll call Ms Brand. She has always been a really nice lady, but she made it clear from the start of time, that she likes brand name products, regardless. I learned a long time ago that it was generally fruitless to argue with people about this. Its a no win situation. They are convinced generics don’t work and even if you showed them a tome worth of evidence to the contrary, they would certainly be the exception to the rule and your credibility would be shot. In fact even if you used the generic MADE by the innovator (same product, same tab, same bottle, just different printing on the tab), it still wouldn’t work. Therefore, I just never went “there” with her. Occasionally she would accept the generic for some antibiotic I didnt’ stock…like Keflex or Cipro.
This was easy for her because she had great insurance at the time. Same copay for everything brand even if generic was available, $25. No problem, and I didn’t feel the need to intervene or interfere.
Well, as all things do, her insurance changed. She had to pay $50 for brand names and had to pay the difference between brand and generic when she took brands. She started to make more and more noise at the cash register about the price of things. Still she was not open to changing to generic meds.
One day I decided to go out a limb. I prepared a statement for her. She spends on average $2400 per year on copays. I printed out what she would save if she went for generic theraputic substitutes for her meds: simvastatin for Lipitor, Citalopram for Lexapro, Albuterol for Proventil HFA, etc.
Once finished, I had taken that $2400 down to $900 per year. I presented these facts to her. When faced with the $1500 savings, she was amazed. She said she would think about it. I figured it was a polite way to blow me off.
Well, about a week later, I got 3 pages of faxes from her dr. Every suggestion I made, she took. She came in later to pick up the drugs and said it was worth $1500 to consider trying generics. If “they didn’t work” then she could always go back to her brands, but saving over $150 per month on meds really spoke to her.
Go Me! So far so good, she has been refilling her generic meds and saving her cash.
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