(NewsNation) — A popular asthma inhaler is set to be discontinued starting Jan. 1 in a switch that could lead to headaches for some patients.
Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline said it will stop selling Flovent and instead replace it with an “authorized generic” version that is similar, but without the same branding.
Dr. Robyn Cohen, a pediatric pulmonologist at Boston Medical Center, told CNN the switch will be a “shock to the system.”
“This medication has been the most commonly used inhaled medication for the past 25 or 30 years,” Cohen said.
The new medication should work just as well, but it may not be as easy to get.
Glaxo told the FDA back in June that it planned to pull the branded drug and start selling the generic version at a lower cost. But now, some pharmacy benefit managers are refusing to cover the new generic product, the Wall Street Journal explained.
A Glaxo spokeswoman told CNN the company is making the change “as part of our commitment to be ambitious for patients,” but experts pointed out it comes at the same times that GSK may face stiff Medicaid penalties for drug price hikes.
Glaxo is among the companies who are set to cut prices for hundreds of drugs come January.
The cuts come after several companies have already announced price decreases for insulins earlier this year, in an effort to avoid penalties that could have been imposed under 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act if they had kept prices high.
Under the law, drug companies are required to rebate the Medicaid program if price increases on medicines outpace inflation — and beginning in January 2024 those rebates could even be larger than the actual net cost of the drug.
In other words, if a drug price is too high, pharmaceutical companies will have to sell the drug to Medicaid at a loss.
“Obviously pharma doesn’t want to be selling at a loss on anything in its portfolio,” analyst Andrew Baum told CNN. “So it seeks to evade impact by, one: discontinuation; two: authorized generic.”
This could have negative consequences for patients.
A CVS Caremark spokesman told CNN the pharmacy is giving preferential placement to a branded inhaler, Pulmicort, instead of the generic version of Flovent.
“In this case, the authorized generics were more expensive than the brand name medications,” the spokesman told the news outlet.
Reuters contributed to this story.
