Feb. 22 at 4:36 PM
$VRTX Chris Fox, the Washington lobbyist who serves as executive director of Voices for Non-Opioid Choices. Fox has traveled to state capitals around the country to lobby for the bills. Recently, he had a personal experience with pain medications following oral surgery.
“For everything but the non-opioid, my out-of-pocket expectation was
$0,” he said. He was charged
$30 out-of-pocket for the non-opioid.
His oral surgeon wasn’t familiar with the availability of the new first-in-class non-opioid suzetrigine, Fox added. When he asked the doctor for a prescription for it, the surgeon wrote it but also prescribed an opioid along with an antibiotic.
“He prescribed me hydrocodone to go along with it, just in case, because he wasn’t as familiar with [suzetrigine],” Fox said.
Preventing Addiction
As he spoke with Stateline by phone, Fox was driving to the local sheriff’s office to drop off the hydrocodone, which he didn’t take following his surgery. https://www.governing.com/policy/states-push-insurers-to-cover-non-opioid-pain-treatments
