Sun Pharmaceuticals new supplier
 

Our pharmacy was no longer able to get Mylan for our sinemet late last year, and was supplying everyone Activis (sp?)...when I asked, I was told they would be able to get Mylan again early in 2018. Great.

We just filled our script, and lo and behold, it wasn't Mylan, but Sun Pharmaceuticals. I googled Sun and found that they were slapped by the FDA in 2015, I think the issue actually involved levodopa formulations, but even if not, this didn't make us feel very good. What's worse, we read that they acquired some other drug company which also had been fined by the FDA.

I notice that these new pills from Sun Pharma are yellow ovals, like our old sinemet used to be, so I want to hope that they work as they're supposed to. But having read what I have, I'm concerned and wanted to see if anyone here has any experience with carbi/levo made by Sun, thanks!

Lurking,
Sorry I can't help you with Sun, no experience there, but I've used the Actavis 25/100 for quite a while without any problems...

Eric

If I remember correctly 2 generic versions of at least the 25/100 Sinemet are run on the same line. (Actavis makes Sun Pharm. tablets at the same location as they run their tablets.

i have no problem getting the mylan 25/100, 25/250 and the 50/200CR.
i'll check with my pharmacy and find out which wholesaler they use. i haven't tried the activas in awhile but it didn't work as well as the TEVA when i did, haven't compared it to MYLAN.

as an aside, i asked my MDS to write out an RX for the 25/250. i pay for it privately and have refilled it twice, to be used as a reserve in case there is another 25/100 shortage. it's cheap and you sure get a lot of l-dopa. i mix in 1/2 tab (125mg) with my daily 25/100 to extend that supply out.

unbelievable that there are so few generics. TEVA is losing lots of money since buying ALLERGAN and we are being punished since the company they sold their C/L patents to, "MAYNARD"? or something like that is just supplying the activas brand which TEVA used to also own.

good idea, what's the cost?
 

That's a really good idea, ST, to have that extra supply. Do you mind sharing (roughly) how much it costs to buy that 25/250 privately? I realize all pharmacies are different, just trying to get a rough idea, thanks!

Sinemet Prices and Sinemet Coupons - GoodRx

it was less than $20.00 for 90 of the 25/250, for some reason it doesn't cost much more than the 25/100. the actual cost is ridiculously cheap until recently and i was told prices have gone up. i'm lucky that one of my former independent pharmacy customers is still in business and will give me better service because i did so many things for him for free, i installed/wrote the software/and supported over 70 pharmacy customers at one time, just by myself, and had many of the major hospitals as customers. i had to tell my customers i had pd but very few changed to a new system and none because i had pd, noone likes to change computer systems and staying with me was the lesser of 2 evils. about 10 years after diagnosis i had to call it quits, i couldn't in good conscience continue to charge my customers, some i had for over 20 years, to maintain their systems when i couldn't guarantee i could continue to support their systems at least a year into the future, and there was a major software change coming due in how pharmacies bill insurance companies which i just couldn't guarantee i could actually finish the software in time and be certified by dozens of insurance companies, each one having a different certification process and each one giving you a short window of time to test in. My customers would have paid me a lot to keep supporting them, to hire help but i felt that might not have worked, allowing someone to work on a pharmacy's computer requires a lot of trust and if i hired the wrong person and the stole information that would be bad and my customers needed to bite the bullet and get new systems from a large vendor which had lots of features i would have to develop from scratch such as optically storing rx's, signatures, linking drug pictures to rx's, automatic refilling over the internet, blah blah blah. anyway, i still have dreams that i missed the deadline and none of my pharmacy customers could bill their insurance companies and i was in big trouble. a pharmacy has 2 weeks to bill a rx, after that they eat the cost so when that problem occurs alarms go off. nothing worse than having to dispense rx's and hope your software vendor will figure out the billing problem within 2 weeks while you are withholding billing $1000's in RX'S everyday. it's great that all pharmacies use the same billing format but it's quite complicated, there are over 1000 different pieces of data that the insurance company can require your software to send and receive, some in any order so each piece of data is preceded by a unique identifier, and with some data elements you can repeat them many times such as disease codes, allergies, basically when your pharmacy sends a claim to your insurance company, it likely goes to a pharmacy benefits manager's computer, which checks if your rx if covered, not filled too soon at any pharmacy, if there is a drug interaction, a medical condition interaction, an allergy interaction, within acceptable dose ranges for your sex/age, makes even more checks and then the response is sent back to the pharmacy, either accepted or rejected and the reasons why and how much the pharmacy will be paid. the screwiest thing about this system is the pharmacy has to send their true cost in the claim and if it's higher than what the claims manager thinks it should be the claims manager will cut the price to what they will allow. the pharmacy can refuse to fill the rx if the reimbursement is too low. but what can happen is the pharmacy might have entered the wrong cost when they setup the drug and be way low, say $10 when it should be $1000 and the benefits manager will reimburse them $10 + dispensing fee,no questions asked, even though the claims manager knows the hi/low costs for this drug. easy to lose money filling rx's if your're a small pharmay. the pharmacist might not see this error until he gets the remittence from the insurance company listing the payment info on their rx's. so to avoid this potential problem, there are companies that will check the numbers on the claim before it goes to the claim processor and won't send it on to the processor if it finds errors. just adds to healthcare costs. and it takes less than 3 seconds to transmit and receive the response back from the claims processor. so to make a long story short, i'm good friends with this pharmacy's owner but i'm sure you can price shop around and find one that won't gauge you. start with GOOD RX.

Much more complicated than I ever thought!
 

That is a complicated business! But I understand why, of course, and have a new appreciation for our pharmacy.

I'll call in and see how much private pay would be, assuming we could get a script for "emergency backup" meds.

Thanks, ST, a wealth of information, appreciate it:)

Lurking,
Just picked up my 25/100 refill and it is Sun Pharma ovals instead of my Actavis round pills...Notice any difference physically with yours vs Mylan? I will let those interested know if I notice a difference over the next couple of weeks....

Eric

No difference
 

No difference, and the ovals are harder to split. The round ones were scored, which made it easier to split. It'd be nice if patients could get the list of ingredients and % for each generic but I guess that would be like giving out the recipe, and no one wants to do that.

sun
 

My 50/200 CR was filled this month with SUN not my usual. Are people having problems with them? I'm turning into a mess and don't know why. The last week I am having tougher times with my off period. Thought DBS would fix all that but I am still dependent on pills though not as many.