For Your Eyes Only

Unless you’re Amish, you’ve probably seen that commercial for Restasis eye drops. You know the one – it features that cute but zombie-like eye doctor whose patient complains that they have to use over the counter eye drops several times a day for chronic dry eye – so the doctor writes her a prescription for Restasis, which she only has to use twice a day.

Been living under a rock for the last year? See the commercial for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUIyE_q7SAo

Apparently, there is a BIG difference between using eye drops ‘SEVERAL’ time a day versus using Restasis ‘TWICE’ a day. A big enough difference to justify the huge difference in price.

A nice big bottle of Equate Artificial Tears at Wal-Mart (around a 6 month supply) sells for around $2 a bottle. Restasis, on the other hand, costs only $210 for 7 day supply (assuming you are using it in both eyes).

So Restasis costs only about 2,700 times more then generic artificial tears from WalMart. Stick with the WalMart brand, and you’ll save almost $11,000 a year. This is quite a swing in profitability for the pharmaceutical company - no wonder they are showing that commercial so often! How fortunate for the zombie-lady doctor who also uses Restasis – as an eye doctor, I’m sure that she gets all the Restasis samples she can use for free.

I’m certain that some patients have such a severe dry eye problem that they need a drug like Restasis, but wouldn’t those patients hear about Restasis from their opthamologist? I’ve been using prescription eye drops for many years now for treating my Glaucoma – yet I never have never seen an advertisement for any of the eye drops that I’ve used – I have always learned about them from my eye physician. In fact, I have never seen a commercial for glaucoma awareness on TV, even though untreated Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness. Glaucoma is, by the way, a well defined disease of the eye, not an ambiguous ‘syndrome’.

Well, thanks to the Restasis people, lots of folks are now acutely aware of ‘dry eye syndrome’. Maybe dry eye syndrome won’t blind you, but, hey, there is no reason for anyone to be uncomfortable, or be forced to use eye drops 3 or 4 times a day. What ever did we do before Restasis? Thank goodness our hard earned health care dollars are being put to such good use!


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