Patented Plavix for Life

The upshot from last week's hearings on drug-eluting stents, as reported in today's papers, suggested that these devices will see declining usage while those who have them implanted will face a life-time of taking blood-thinning drugs like Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Aventis' Plavix. This anecdote caught my eye in today's Wall Street Journal story:

Kevin Graham, director of preventive cardiology at Minneapolis Heart Institute in Minnesota, said he recently saw an elderly woman who already had a drug-coated stent and was on Plavix, at $6 a day, and a host of other medicines typical of a regimen for heart patients. She told him her monthly prescription bill was $436, while her social-security check was just over $900. "She was literally crying," Dr. Graham says. She had hit the "donut hole," a gap in Medicare drug coverage when patients have to pay the full cost of their medications themselves.

He reluctantly took her off the drug, and so far, she is okay, he says. "In those scenarios, people have to decide whether to pay the rent, pay their lights bills, buy food or buy the drugs."

Then, I found this brief item on the WSJ website:

A federal appeals court upheld an injunction halting Apotex Inc.'s sales of a generic version of the blockbuster heart drug Plavix. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington upheld an August injunction issued by the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a legal victory for Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Sanofi-Aventis SA, the marketers of the blood thinner. The appellate-court ruling means that Apotex, a Weston, Ontario, generic-drug maker, may not resume selling a cheaper, copycat version of Plavix in the U.S., pending the outcome of a patent-rights trial set to begin in January. Apotex began selling generic Plavix in August despite the existence of a Sanofi U.S. patent for Plavix that doesn't expire until 2011. Apotex argues that the patent is invalid and unenforceable, a contention disputed by Bristol-Myers and Sanofi.

Put them together and here's a good headline for a Page One leader in the Journal:

An Xmas Story:
Medicare, Patent laws
Force Woman to Choose
Between Meds and Food