ERFA thyroid and cost

[Melaniel]

Hi 👋 I've just been prescribed ERFA thyroid privately but the local pharmacist says it will cost me £568 for 3 months and that the NHS wont pay... is there anyone out there that knows where the pharmacist can get it cheaper? He says he will have to import it from Canada .. I don't even know if it will work for me but currently Levo doesn't make any difference in how I feel... any help would be so appreciated! 😃

[ITYFIALMCTT]

See Clutter 's advice on the comments: healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

[Hidden]

I used to buy NDT in Belgium (now on Thai NDT), and first Armour tripled in price, then Erfa...not that they were cheap to begin with, but now they are unacceptably expensive IMO. It seems no healthcare insurance pays for NDT, meaning patients have to bear the whole cost. I was told by one pharmacist the reason for this is that NDT is not a registered drug.

[Melaniel in reply to Hidden]

Thankyou! 😀

[Framboise]

As long as you have a prescription you can phone several other pharmacies to get a better price. I suggest you have a look at the Thyroid UK page in the link below and try the ones there, I have bought a different NDT from two of the pharmacies shown there and can recommend both of them for good prices and service. You phone for the price, send your original prescription by post (keep a photocopy of it!) and they contact you by phone to pay and then send them out, it usually takes 3 days from start to receiving the tablets. One of them is currently showing ERFA as £1 per grain on their online shop, others may be cheaper. I'm never sure if I can mention a specific pharmacy when you have a private prescription so will PM you the two I can recommend from that TUK list

thyroiduk.org/tuk/treatment...

[Melaniel in reply to Framboise]

Thankyou! 😀

[Hidden in reply to Framboise]

This is interesting...does that mean that prices can vary from one UK pharmacy to another? As far as I know, all pharmacies in Belgium charge the same for prescription drugs...in that case, I hope you can find a better price elsewhere, Melanie!

[Framboise in reply to Hidden]

Yes Anna, I don't know if it depends on the exchange rate, or profit percentage, or how they work it out, but the difference can be significant. I had prescriptions recently for both Nature-Throid, which I've taken for a few months, and WP which my endo suggested I try. One of the TUK mentioned pharmacies quoted me 30P for 1 grain of Nature-Throid, but didn't stock WP, the next pharmacy quoted me 60P each for 1 grain of both Nature-Throid and WP, so I bought the Nature-Throid from the first one and the WP from the second and as both orders were over £50 there were no postal charges. I don't know how charging works out for meds normally available in the UK which are on private prescription though, they may also differ.

[Hidden in reply to Framboise]

Very interesting....and good for you in the UK!

[Clutter]

Welcome to the forum, Melaniel,

Ring around the online pharmacies in the link below to see whether they can offer a better price.

thyroiduk.org.uk/tuk/treatm...

[Melaniel in reply to Clutter]

Thankyou will do 😀

[WoodRat5]

£568 ??!! I order it from Canada (to the US) for about £40 per 100 30mg! Where the $#% is the NHS getting it from? And the US politicians want to model "Medicare For All" on the NHS..

I assume at least in part - how you do a government-run health insurance program and get the doctors to go along with Medicare rates which are 20% below private insurance rates - and even *below cost* I've read (albeit in the the moderate-far right Wall Street Journal - I have no idea what the US/UK "political spectrum equivalency scale" is.)

US doctors aren't going to like taking a 20% haircut - some TV program here (I forget which) did interviews of rural doctors and asked what would happen if Medicare For All went through and they had to take current MC rates. The answers: "we'd go out of business."

<medical/political rant>

How much of the cost is "profit".

How much is regulatory burden (both R&D "mandated trials" even for things that have been prescribed for years off-label, on-going user fees charged by the FDA, and the "uncertainty tax" by the FDA approval process (I assume).

How much is insurance-related bureaucrat-crap. How much is that the insurance industry seeming to overlook the idea that off-label stuff *might actually work and do their own $%! studies: Thyroid and hyperbaric oxygen therapy for brain injury and PTSD are my favorite examples.

How much is "pharmacy benefit managers" - which seem to serve no real purpose.

I have no idea.

<cynical me> Oh well, I'll be dead in about 50 years anyway.. </cynical>

And yes, my cynicism seems to scale inversely with my thyroid dose.