Tennessee Living

About the Author - Dana Keeton

Dana Keeton is Communications Coordinator for TRH Health Plans. For more health tips, visit www.trh.com and click on Healthwise.

I’m starting to sound like my father, and that scares me.

It started with watching television in bed, a habit to which no one should succumb no matter how tempted. Because once that starts, actually sitting up to watch TV simply becomes too much work.

But back to my point. It wasn’t a droll sitcom or tear-jerking drama that led to my father-esque rant, but commercials. About prescription drugs. One after the other. All evening long. If I had a dime for every time I heard the phrase “just ask your doctor about (insert name of prescription drug here),” I … well, I would have a lot of dimes. Which brings me back to my father.

Maybe because he was raised on an isolated farm, or maybe because he grew up with not a lot of dimes, my dad has always been hyper-conscientious about medication, whether prescription or over-the-counter. It’s not that he won’t take medicine. Now 71 years old, he takes his one prescription – for high blood pressure – exactly as directed.

But he has a strong opinion about a society he believes has bought into a “pill for every ill” mentality. For my dad, medication is always the last resort, not the first.

After seeing all those commercials and learning that $2.5 billion was spent on prescription drug ads last year (Tennessee, by the way, leads the nation in prescription drug use), I’m beginning to think maybe Pop has it right. Do we really need to take a pill at the slightest onset of anything? And does watching commercial after commercial about the wonders of this or that new drug add to the problem?

Some people argue that all these drug ads promote education about health issues and result in people taking a more proactive role in their care. I’m all for that. And I’m all for people having access to medicine they need. But the commercials I saw didn’t seem to promote education as much as the desire to buy that particular product. And there’s little doubt the ads promote sales for drug companies: More than $2 in sales for every $1 spent on advertising, according to one study.

And the structure of most health-care plans doesn’t encourage consumers to be careful about how many prescriptions they buy. Generally, their out-of-pocket expense is a co-pay that might range from $5 to $30, regardless of the total cost of the drug.

At TRH Health Plans, our coverage handles drug benefits a little differently. Our Farm Bureau members pay for the cost of a drug up front and then file a claim to be reimbursed for benefits. There’s a reason for this: Because the cost comes first out of their own pocketbooks, TRH members become wise health-care consumers. So, they tend to ask their doctor if a drug is the only option for treatment. And they’re more likely to ask for generics or have only a portion of the prescription filled until they’re sure it can help them.

In other words, they act more like my dad. Taking medication is something to be thoughtfully considered, not an automatic go-to solution.

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Summer 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
A Pill for Every Ill

Summary:
TRH Health Plans encourage Farm Bureau members to be cautious and wise about prescriptions.

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