I am not a fan of insurance companies, drug companies, or drug ads on TV. Drug ads on TV have been shown to be ineffective to selling drugs - so why do drug companies continue to waste money in this way? It is name recognition. When a physician prescribes a drug, and the name is familiar to the patient, the patient is more likely to take the drug as prescribed. I was prescribed Boniva a little over a year ago. My most recent bone density tests show I am not worse, but also no better, than before I began taking the drug. The cost of Boniva (even with insurance) is ridiculously expensive, so I was excited to see a possible alternative to Boniva. Googling alendronate sodium, as mentioned in the article, I found it is a generic substitute for Fosamax, not Boniva. The active ingredient in Boniva is ibandronate sodium, but it is too new of a drug to have a generic. I thought I might change to the Fosamax generic instead of Boniva - but wanted to see if they are comparable. As we all know, no drug is free of side effects - so I had to weight all of the pros and cons. The bottom line is this: based on medical studies (not controlled by the drug companies), post-menopausal women taking Boniva have been found to have had 62% fewer fractures vs. 44-48% fewer fractures when taking Fosamax/alendronate sodium. The findings are significant and the reason, for now, I will stick with Boniva (and will look forward to the generic when it is approved). I feel I am worth the extra cost of Boniva to have extra fracture protection.

I couldn't help commenting on this subject, because I so, detest the Sally Field advertisement. The first reason being I'm a 58 year old white married female. I was told several years ago to take Actonel another type of Osteoporosis treatment drug, because I'm post menopausal. I did take it, as prescribed for over a year, actually 2 1/2 years. I still showed up as having Osteopenia, on my bone density scan, that's pre-Osteoporosis. I had to jump through insurance loops to stay on the silly drug (that didn't work anyway) because it's a name brand and there is no generic name comparable. By the way this goes back a few years 2000, anyway, I got very aggravated with having to explain to the insurance company that Actonel was the only approved drug for this condition at the time, or should I say to prevent the condition from further advancing to Osteoporosis. I stopped taking it because it was a pain in the you know what, to take this one pill every Sunday morning (that at the time was the day of my choice) and then stand around or sit for a 1/2 hour, I used to take it early when I got up to go to the bathroom, and I wanted to go back to bed but I couldn't because your not supposed to lay down. Also it say's if you have indigestion, which I have had most of my life. Now there are at least 5 other drugs on the market. The most recent being a once a year injection. Then I started paying better attention to all of the ads and side effects and started to research on the internet information on these drugs. I was horrified. In a majority of cases women get jaw necrosis. Yep, that's where too much of the stuff goes to the jaw, and kills the bone tissue circulation, and a part of the law dies! Isn't that lovely? So madam Field like many other top celebrities get sold a bill of goods, and get huge pay checks to hawk their product. That's just a crying shame. When like you say some people really need a drug, for a proven ailment, like in your case asthma. Not a possible preventative for a possible condition, that can have possible sever side effects. What the hell did women do in the old days anyway? Are there millions of women running around today in their 80's and 90's with bone fractures or broken bones, as a result of Post Menopausal Osteoporosis? These drugs have only been on the market 15 - 20 years, perhaps. So all those women who didn't get/take therapy, should be dropping like flies, right?

There are so many flaws in this argument the least of which is the fact that Boniva has some horrible side effects that it will be interesting to see just how long Sally Fields lives taking it. Google the side effects sometime and see what it really does. Second, there are not 48 million American's without health insurance. That figure includes an estimated 15- 20 million aliens -legal or otherwise and 8 million child covered under Schip programs. Actually 18 million since the new legislation was passed a few weeks ago. As far as charging what they want, pharma companies are just as entitled to do that as General Motors or Apple Computer are. If you don't like price of an Apple Computer buy a Dell. The difference between computers and medicine is that you will research the computer, but not the medicine. you know, whatever Doc says, right? The best way to make insurance affordable- right now- is to eliminate state mandates and let insurance companies offer national programs- a Geico or Safe Auto of health insurance. Let them offer a variety of coverage so the college student can buy one type of plan and the 55 year old another. We don't all drive Chevy's you know.