Health Insurance Plan Promotes ‘Pill Splitting’

A health insurance plan popular with central Illinoisans is urging consumers to use “pill splitting” to drive down their prescription drug costs.

Urbana-based Health Alliance in October will launch a voluntary “split the pill, split the bill” program for enrollees in its health plans with pharmacy benefits.

A Health Alliance spokeswoman said patients could reduce their co- payment costs by 50 percent by asking their doctors to prescribe pills that are double their usual dosage, and then cut the pills in half to take the usual dose. In doing so, patients would get double the medication for one co-payment.

Co-payment amounts usually vary according to employers’ plans.

In its Illinois-Iowa coverage area, Health Alliance has 203,000 members who also get pharmacy benefits through the company. Of that number, 83,850 are state of Illinois employees.

The program would not apply to those state employees who are enrolled in Health Alliance Illinois (not HMO). The nearly 9,000 employees enrolled in that self-insured plan will continue to get their medications through Medco, the new pharmacy benefit manager that took over from Caremark as of July 1.

Jocelyn Browning of Health Alliance said the 18 brand-name and generic pills that will be used in the “split the pill, split the bill” program include the following: Abilify, Cardura, Celexa, clonazepam, Keppra, Lamictal, Lexapro, Lipitor, lisinopril, Paxil, Pravachol, Provigil, Risperdal, Seroquel, Viagra, Zocor, Zoloft and Zyprexa.

“(Our pharmacy team has) done a lot of research to determine what are the safest pills to split, and that’s how they determined the 18,” Browning said.

A spokesman for pharmacists statewide said patients should split only those pills recommended for splitting, which usually are recognizable by the indented “score” mark across the middle of the pill.

“We’re not opposed to pill-splitting, as long as people are trained on how to do it with a knife or a pill splitter,” said Mike Patton of the Illinois Pharmacists Association.

Health Alliance in October will launch another cost-saving measure for enrollees who also get their pharmacy benefits through the insurer. The company will waive the co-payment of a Tier 1 (usually generic) maintenance medication when an enrollee purchases that medication for the first time.

Browning said the “First Month Free” program is a money-saver for consumers and Health Alliance, noting that prescription drug costs generally far outweigh other health-care costs, with brand-name drugs costing more than generics.

“Anytime we can increase generic utilization, even with giving away a co-payment for a month, it’s going to increase savings to the health plan,” Browning said.

For more information, log onto www.healthalliance.org or call toll free (800) 851-3379.