Popular asthma inhaler will be discontinued Jan. 1. Here’s what users should know
.jpg "Popular asthma inhalers Flovent HFA and Flovent Diskus are set to be discontinued in 2024, their manufacturer says.")
People using the popular corticosteroid inhalers Flovent HFA or Flovent Diskus to treat their asthma will need to switch to a new product in 2024.
Flovent manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline announced in June that it would be discontinuing its Flovent-branded products starting Jan. 1 and will instead produce an authorized generic version with an identical formula and device design, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
But doctors are raising concerns about hurdles patients will face in accessing medication if their insurance providers don’t cover the new authorized generics.
“This medication has been the most commonly used inhaled medication for the past 25 or 30 years,” Dr. Robyn Cohen, a pediatric pulmonologist at Boston Medical Center, told CNN.
“The fact that it’s being discontinued is going to be a huge shock to the system for patients, for families and for doctors,” Cohen told the outlet.
For some patients, switching to an entirely new product isn’t possible, doctors say.
Alternatives like Arnuity and Qvar, which are now the preferred treatments of some insurance carriers, are not appropriate for children due to the breath capacity needed to dispense the medication, Dr. Christopher Oermann said in a Dec. 8 news release from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Both Flovent and the authorized generic can be used by patients 4 years and older, GSK says.
“There are lots of children that are hospitalized every day in the United States with asthma exacerbations, and there are kids that die every year in the United States as a result of severe asthma exacerbations,” Oermann said. “If those kids that are poorly controlled don’t have access to preventive inhalers, some of those kids could die.”
Why are the inhalers being discontinued?
A spokeswoman for GSK told the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America that the company is making the change to provide U.S. patients “with potentially lower cost alternatives.”
GSK’s switch to authorized generics aligns with the Jan. 1 scheduled removal of the cap on Medicaid drug rebates as established in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act.
This cap protected manufacturers like GSK from ever paying more than the total cost of a drug back to Medicaid.
With the cap lifted, manufacturers are at risk of selling drugs that have undergone price hikes to Medicaid at a loss. The price of Flovent products has increased nearly 50% over the last decade, GoodRx data shows.
Andrew Baum, a Citi analyst, told CNN that GSK “seeks to evade impact by, one: discontinuation; two: authorized generic.”
The AAFA recommends talking with your doctor about appropriate alternatives, including the authorized generics, if you are a Flovent user, and checking with your insurance provider about which asthma medications it covers.
This story was originally published December 28, 2023 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Popular asthma inhaler will be discontinued Jan. 1. Here’s what users should know."
