Price Watch: Three Companies Cap Out-of-Pocket Costs on Asthma Inhalers to $35 a Month

This spring, Voices for Affordable Health reported on one pharmaceutical company’s plans to cap consumers’ out-of-pocket costs for asthma inhalers.

That company, AstraZeneca, kept its word, capping costs at $35 a month beginning June 1. Even better news is that two other drugmakers—Boehringer Ingelheim and GlaxoSmithKline—followed AstraZeneca’s lead.

Their move certainly helps consumers, but it also takes a little political heat off Big Pharma. NBC News reports an investigation by the Democratic-led Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions noted AstraZeneca charges $645 in the U.S. for the same inhaler it charges $49 for in the U.K. Teva Pharmaceuticals, another major inhaler manufacturer, charges $286 in the U.S. for an inhaler that costs $9 in Germany.

At these rates, even Americans with health insurance were forking over hundreds of dollars each month to control their asthma. The reductions will provide at least some relief for more than 27 million people in the U.S., including five million children, who have asthma.

Inhalers are most often used to relieve or prevent common asthma symptoms, including shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing and tightness in the chest.

Dr. Alan Baptist, the division chief of allergy and immunology in the department of internal medicine at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, told NBC he was “surprised” by the price drops but welcomed the news.

“In some ways, it’s just a Band-Aid on the bigger problem that we have,” Baptist said. “The real problem is the outrageous cost of pharmaceutical and drug prices in the United States.”

Have you stopped using an inhaler due to high cost? Will the price drop make a difference? Share your story (and selfie!) with Voices for Affordable Health.