Medicaid doesn't cover Asacol HD

Earlier this year, I left my an employer and started with a new one. In between, I got Medicaid as my primary insurance. I've had to find all new doctors to attempt to continue prescribing Asacol HD for me. Unfortunately, Medicaid doesn't cover it and I'm left with the alternative options many on this forum take.

I've filed a complaint, because people on Medicaid are not provided a list of preferred and covered medications, so as I ran out and tried to get a month's supply, I was almost hit with an $800 bill.

Would appreciate some input from everyone on how other 5asa drugs differ from Asacol HD and if anyone else was hit with something like this...?

I don't want to rock my boat, my regimen. I never believed this drug did anything for me, but to switch to another preferred medication seems risky to me.

The Asacol manufacturer Werner-Chilcott pulled some very underhanded stuff to get their Asacol patent renewed, and I think insurers like yours and mine dropped coverage of their drugs in retaliation. (They removed an inactive ingredient, some phthalate, that the FDA said might be kind of dangerous but hasn't outright banned, and this got their expired Asacol patent renewed for another 20 years.)

When I was in this situation I switched to Lialda, which in my experience has been cheaper, possibly more effective, and you have to take fewer pills of it than with Asacol or Asacol HD.

ugh...pet peeve!!
why does insurance get to dictate what treatment we get?!?!


so sorry you have to deal with this poo

There's a variety of medications directly equivalent to asacol hd: lialda, apriso, pentasa, and delzicol. Lialda and apriso are once a day pills. All have the same active ingredient. There's slight differences in delayed-release cloating, initial release points, distribution rates, and inactive ingredients. So, some here say they've experienced slight differences. Most doctors and pharmacists would say they're the same.

There's a few generics: sulfasalazine and colazal. These medications are more complex molecules that your gut bacteria cleave into mesalamine and a byproduct.