MeAndMine wrote:Looks like my oral chemo will be pills through mail order. The doctor said he prescribed Xeloda, the pharmacy that called said they are still working on it but it's the generic version. Have any of you read about or noticed any difference in using one or the other? She said they could ask the doctor to switch it to Xeloda. I notice on my insurance website, Xeloda is over $9,600 where the generic is $1,600.
My doctor ordered Xeloda but there was one time when they screwed things up enough so that I had to get the generic. I didn't notice any difference. I actually would have preferred that the doctor ordered the generic but I wasn't going to tell him what to do. I would rather save our insurance plan money when I can.
Your insurance company should negotiate prices with providers so they may have a negotiated lower rate. I think that the bills for my care ran about $500K but the insurance paid about $300K. One eye-popping thing was the first Oxaliplatin infusion - billed at $11,000, negotiated price was $1,000.
That said, I've heard some people (not cancer patients) say that generics affect them differently. I don't see why this should happen as they should have the same active ingredients - but it's something that I've heard. If you are in any doubt, go with the name brand.
Also, watch your mail-order pharmacy like a hawk. For Neo-Adjuvant, I had to order two times because there's a maximum number of pills that they will give out in an order. So I only had to go through the pain of dealing with them twice. But both times, it was very touch and go whether or not they would get here in time. For Adjuvant, I had to order every cycle - that was 8 cycles and a lot of time on the phone.