Medications and the Economy - Episode 26
Amanda Keylor, Healthcare Analyst

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the economy isn’t doing so well these days.  Notice the hint of sarcasm.  But seriously, you can barely go five minutes without getting an update on the state of the depressingly abysmal economy these days.  Tickers induce nausea, mergers foster paranoia of downsizing, and unemployment is up higher than it’s been in year.  People aren’t spending money because they’re scared, which of course then makes profits drop and perpetuates an alarming cycle.  During my morning runs through Central Park, I’m more or less still waiting to see if a new Hooverville pops up again. Even if you are one of the lucky ones who still has a job (right now), and expensive restaurants or extravagant shopping sprees were never your thing; you’re probably feeling especially cost conscious and are looking at ways of cutting back your spending, “just in case”. The New York Times just reporting that consumer spending is down, while consumer saving is up to the highest its been in six years.

So let’s say you’re revamping your budget to include more savings and less splurges. But what do you think you can go without? Daily Starbucks runs? Your beloved Netlix? Organic groceries? Manicures? Haircuts? OK, maybe. You might be able to stretch out some of those. But what about something important like medication? If you’ve lost your job or don’t have insurance, choosing whether or not to fill or refill a prescription can be a dilemma.  Let’s be honest, even if you have a job and insurance, non-covered prescriptions can be shockingly costly.  In our current economic state, the price of a pharmaceutical product is of even more importance than before.  In fact, according to our Cybercitizen Health study version 8.0, almost 40 million consumers have opted not to fill a prescription because of the cost.  Forty million. That’s A LOT of unfilled prescriptions.  Avoiding filling a necessary prescription can obviously have some nasty health repercussions, which of course, if you’re uninsured, makes it scarier.

So where do you go for information about prescriptions and pricing?  Like they do with so many other health-related things, consumers turn to the Internet for pharmaceutical product pricing information. ePharma consumers – that is those who have gone online looking for pharmaceutical information for themselves or someone else in the past 12 months – make up 93.5 million people in the US.  And while search engines and health insurance websites are common go-to sources for information, more than three-quarters of ePharma Consumers are interested in finding drug price information online on general health sites like WebMD or EverydayHealth.  And almost 80% of ePharma Consumers agree that they expect pharmaceutical companies to provide pricing information online. So what, you say? Well, this gives 2 major types of health websites – general health sites and pharmaceutical product or corporate sites - the opportunity to provide valuable information to consumers when they’re looking for it. Leveraging the opportunity the right way could generate trust and loyalty.

The opportunity is now. As we’ve covered, saving money is important. More than half of ePharma Consumers said they’d like to receive money saving coupons or codes for pharmaceutical products through email.  Maybe the presence of more coupons would enable more consumers to be able to fill the prescriptions they resisted filling due to cost.  Everyone wins!

Speaking of everyone winning, we’d love to hear from you! If you have questions, comments, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a podcast, please feel free to email us at podcast@manhattanresearch.com.

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That concludes today’s podcast, and thank you for joining us today.


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