An article about ending perks that pharmaceutical companies grant to doctors in the form of swag and cushy conferences included this quote:

“I would often grab samples off the shelf because I thought I was doing patients a favor,” Krumholz said in a telephone interview. “I was naive. I didn’t realize this was a very effective marketing technique.”

Drug companies see samples as a perk for physicians, and a marketing tool for their product. As a patient, I see it as saving a trip to the drug store, and saving money.

The $471.21 I pay for health insurance every month does not cover a full year’s worth of the prescriptions that I need to breathe. There is a $2000 cap on brand name medications, and since two of the asthma meds I use (advair and singulair) are not available in this country as generics, I pay an additional $300 a month or so for my medications for the last 3 or 4 months of the year. So I have taken to begging for drugs. Any time I go to a doctor now—any doctor—I ask what they have in their samples cabinet*. That 2-week advair sample I got in December saved me over $100.

When I was still suffering from migraines, the number of imitrex tablets I could get in a month was not always sufficient to treat a month’s worth of migraines. Since my experience with migraine prophylaxis was unpleasant (so disoriented I couldn’t find my way home, puking in the street), I was not about to take my health insurer’s recommendation to go on extremely powerful epilepsy drugs that permanently change your brain chemistry. Just give me my damn imitrex**.

I took part in a migraine study, and they had a whole cabinet full. Whee! And I’m a triptan whore—imitrex, relpax, maxalt, if the chemical name ends in “triptan” I’ll give it a try.

So maybe there won’t be any more continuing education Caribbean cruises for the docs. Boo hoo for them. And I don’t think they are being swayed by all those piles of logo-emblazoned post-it pads and pens that my old allergy doc used to leave in a basket on the desk for patients. But damn, if they end the samples, they’re going to cost me a few hundred dollars a year.

*Note to pharmaceutical companies: your sample packing sucks. Having a box holding seven boxes that each hold one blister pack with one pill is about as un-green as you can get. Nobody’s looking at the pretty package on a shelf. It’s stuck in a supply cabinet. And the clinics could fit a lot more supplies if your sample packaging didn’t take up so damn much room.

**Note to Glaxo: your packaging for imitrex sucks. It was not tested on a migraneur in agony trying to open the package in the dark at 3am. Also, the only way to carry a single pill in your purse is to get scissors that can cut a blister pack out of that thick cardboard. If you need someone to design new packaging for you, I’m right down the road.

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