Hi Derrek, I am astounded that medicaid wouldnt pay for oxy but paid for the Opana? Just blows me away! As the oxy has to be more cost effective then Opana being as new as it is and the patent still on it meaning NO generic.
I will never understand medicaids reasoning behind anything they do. It seems if you find something that works that isnt good enough for them they want you to try something else.
Opana has basically been around a good many years but the names have been changed as well as they route in which we can get it. For a great many years and somewhere around 50 of these it came only to the hospital as injectable solutions then suppository form and most recently in pill form that was shortly after release pulled off the market for a time due to what else? Those folks ever searching for the ultimate high and was taking it back to its origional format of injecting it. They altered it a bit so it couldnt be injected from broken down pill form and back it came since those who had been on it in its short slef life did well on it.
It has been compared to methadone in its actions but I have no knowledge of how that is.
I do know that it is a narcotic antagonist and can cause withdrawls in somone accomadated to say other opiates such as methadone and again I would have to do more research for this why and how.
I know from experience it was a great pain relieving med in its injectable form and was fast working and long acting.
It does however have some very heavy interaction with other meds so please familiarize yourself to what those are by visiting one of the interaction sites such as Drugdigest.com and there are several and a google would get you there. I also know it cant be mixed with alot of other CNS meds such as Benzo's(valium,zanax,etc.) some anti-D meds and such.
Maybe I can better aquaint you with this med by saying it is closely related to the dilaudid families? Most folks have heard of these.
I am more then a little upset that medicaid can and does require someone to attempt to fix something that isnt broken just so they can say they did. Requiring anyone to try 2 meds in one week or any amount of time before eventually allowing to go back to what you were on to begin with is absurd in my book. Especially when the ones they want you to try are more expensive then the one you were on? What's that? From your post It looks as if your Doc still had to do a pre-auth to get it for you and paid for by medicaid so what difference did it make which one they were pre-authing?
Most likely hs more to do with the ever watching Drug war folks and trying to cut down on how much Oxy is actually circulating out there and again those who need the meds cant get it without jumping thru hoops and those who dont need it have plenty of it out there to obtain. Big BIg article in our local Sunday paper on how much meds come out of Florida since they implemented a tracking system and then put it on hold and folks from all over the US drip into Florida and see Docs and come out with thousands of dollars worth of meds a month. I was recently talking to my daughter whom lives in Miami and she told me that in the college newspaper that they put out on campus once a week there is a large 2-page ad listing all the clinics specializing in pain treatment with opiates and methadone and sub-x clinics and addresses and toll free numbers and even to the extent of the cost of getting in. I was stunned and maybe I am just naive? But this probably says more about why you have to do what you have to do then money.
Anyway I wish you the best of luck here and hopefully if it doesnt work out they will allow you to go back to something that does.