I know the exact price of generic Oxycontin becuase my insurance company has this thing where they force me to pay cash at the pharmacy and then they reimburse me a week later.

It's a pain in the butt, but since oxy is the best long-acting for me I deal with it. Although this weird thing with the insurance is why I switched the the patch eariler this year because I didn't want to deal with the hassle, but whe the patch gave me a heat rash I decided to deal with the hassle because oxycontin gives me the best relief.

Anyway, for 20mg generic Oxycontin, 120 pills a month, the cost is $325 at my pharmacy.

For conversion... I went from 20mg oxycontin three times a day to 50mcg patches, then the doc upped the patches to 75mcg. When I had the problem with the heat rash and went back to the oxycontin I went fom 75mcg patches right back to 20mg oxycontin three times a day. I didn't have any problems with any of the conversions, no withdrawls, no incrased pain, no problems at all.

I now take 20mg oxycontin 3 times a day, with the option to take a 4th pill as needed. The doc writes "take 2 in the am and 1 or 2 in the pm" on the script with the oral instruction to me to take it every 8 hours and take the extra pill as needed at any time of day. This works great for me because on bad pain days I don't have to load up on percocet to fight the pain.

One of the things my doc and I have done to combat tolerance is to switch me off of oxy and onto MS contin for 2-3 months, and then back to oxycontin at my original dose. We do this every 12-18 months depending on when I feel like the oxycontin is less effective.

Although the conversion charts say that 20mg oxycontin equals 30mg MS Contin, for me, we have found that I do fine switching from 20mg oxycontin three times a day to 15mg MS Contin three times a day.

I personally don't like MS Contin as a pain med - it's makes me tired and groggy and causes too much constipation - but it does work on my pain, I just hate the side effects.... but to combat oxycontin tolerance I am willing to be on ms contin for 2-3 months every once in a while so that I don't have to constantly increase my oxycontin dose to make it effective.

I have been on oxycontin for several years now, and until this summer I stayed at 20mg three times a day and it was effective. It was just recently that the doc added the option to take a 4th pill a day, and that was not a tolerance issue but a pain increase issue.

Sorry to ramble, but hopefully I said something helpful

take care,
Liz