Copayments for AD/HD Medications on the Rise

Many insurers have increased copayments for some of the most commonly prescribed AD/HD drugs to help control costs.

To control costs, many insurers are upping copayments for certain drugs, including several of the most commonly prescribed AD/HD meds. In a recent study, 17 percent of children using medication for AD/HD stopped taking the medication, at least temporarily, after their insurance companies upped the copayment.

Many insurance plans offer two or three tiers of drugs, with a different copayment for each tier, and most offer discounts for using generic medications. If the cost of medication is emptying your wallet, ask your doctor about cheaper alternatives. Check with your insurance company for less expensive mail-order sources. If you have a choice of plans, look carefully at the copayment amounts for drugs before signing up.

The study, led by Haiden Huskamp, Ph.D., associate professor of health economics at Harvard Medical School, appeared in the April 2005 Archives of General Psychiatry.