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Patches and other NRT and smoking aid products are drugs and regulated as such by the FDA. E liquid cannot be sold with any sort of smoking cessation claim or it will be regarded as an unapproved and mislabeled product. You need formal testing and approval before selling any new drug. That's a path vaping manufacturers do not want to go down. That is a ton of work and two tons of dollars to attempt with no assurance of approval. Vaping is bring treated under the TCA which hopefully will be a more reasonable approach than a new drug approval.
Your insurance carrier will only pay for approved prescription medications and maybe some over the counter stuff like NRT patches and gum. Maybe. There's no way they'll pay for your juice if it's not approved as a drug with proven efficacy for smoking cessation. Unless you're in the UK where their National Health Service is a lot more open to the idea of giving out vape stuff to help people quit.
Your insurance carrier will only pay for approved prescription medications and maybe some over the counter stuff like NRT patches and gum. Maybe. There's no way they'll pay for your juice if it's not approved as a drug with proven efficacy for smoking cessation. Unless you're in the UK where their National Health Service is a lot more open to the idea of giving out vape stuff to help people quit.
Learn to make it yourself. Once you do that, it's so close to free that the costs are hardly worth worrying about. The cost of the ingredients for my liquid works out to roughly $5 per month.
Didn't one of the head honchos at FDA mention a potential OTC pathway for ENDS a while back?
$560 for your 30 mls Vanilla Custard...unless you want generic.... by the way, what's your co-pay?
Didn't one of the head honchos at FDA mention a potential OTC pathway for ENDS a while back?
Eh, that's still under the drug arm of the FDA rather than the tobacco arm. It's why the best to go for is a modified harm reduction tobacco product. If you go for treatment of smoking cessation you're back in the drug line. We can say it helps people stop smoking, but no manufacturer or retailer ever can. The best they can do is say it's a modified risk product. And not even by how much less harmful it might be without actual clinical trials to compare against cigarettes. It's a grey zone as it is. Trying to throw any sort of health claims in is perilous. Vaping needs its own path. No claims, no foul.
I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was a good idea.
But there's also the question wither OTC approval for some products would preclude PMTA or MRTA approval for others? My thinking is that it wouldn't.
Yep - mine works out to less than a buck for 30ml, and so mine is only between $2-3/mo.
But here's another route to save money - I checked with my insurance agent after quitting smokes to see if I can get the non-smoker rate for one of my term life policies, while vaping nicotine. I figured most policies use the term "tobacco use," so I thought it was worth a try, and it worked. He'd never checked into it before, but here was his response after checking. My new policy started this month.
Yep. I don't carry any life insurance anymore, but much to my surprise, my health insurance company does not consider a vaper to be a "tobacco user". And yes, I got it in writing from them before I let them change my status.
They should be treated separately, but you're left with the big problem that getting an OTC approval on what's been deemed a tobacco product is going to be impossible from a practical perspective. Can you actually approve a tobacco product, even for OTC sales as a drug? Can you imagine trying to explain and sell that story to anyone? Picture the headline "FDA approves new tobacco product to get tobacco users from using tobacco ".
Obviously that makes no rational sense, but who ever claimed anything rational would ever be decided in the first place. The attitude of harm reduction and leave it in the hands of the vaping industry, avoid modified risk claims, and require just to be made with pre-approved components in GMP facilities is about the best we'll get for retail juice. On the hardware side, battery safety features and stuff like improved protection from leakage and breakage for tanks might be the best outcome as well.
Personally IMO that's being overly optimistic but it never hurts to hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Which is what vape manufacturers are already doing with more pod mods and next pod mods with better power controls to the coul/heating element as the to be released Evolv sorta pod mod is looking to be positioned for.
As you the original issue of insurance coverage and vaping, no matter what happens at the FDA, I think that's simply a pipe dream in the US.
Wait, pipes are tobacco products too. There's no escaping this rabbit hole.
Sure...
In about 10 ~ 15 Years after the Clinical Drug Trials and FDA Drug Approval process is Complete.
But that Doesn't need to happen. Thanks to the Most Honorable Judge Leon circa 2009/2010.
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Insurance companies only cover FDA approved products for Tobacco Cessation. They also only cover those because the law requires them to cover tobacco cessation as preventative care. So unless the FDA approves Vaping as a medical tobacco cessation product you will have to continue paying for your own vaping equipment and supplies. This isn't very likely to happen anytime soon and possibly never.
Here are the details provided by the American Lung Association.
Tobacco Cessation Treatment: What Is Covered?
Here are the details provided by the American Lung Association.
Tobacco Cessation Treatment: What Is Covered?
Why not? Is the nicotine in Nicorette (and similar) products not derived from tobacco, just like ours is?
Insurance companies only pay for the Nicotine patches, etc for 90 days anyway. Unless you are planning on quitting it wouldn't be much benefit anyway. As stated above here by others. DIY is very cheap. I spend around $1.75 per 60 ML.
Doesn't matter where it was derived from. The original developer of the patch went through the entire $100 million dollar process of getting it approved as a drug which could legally be labeled and sold as a drug cessation product.
I say the same thing even with studies standing behind me.
Nicotine treatment for ulcerative colitis
Influence of Crohn’s disease risk alleles and smoking on disease location
Nicotine Enemas for Active Crohn's Colitis: An Open Pilot Study
I saved them having to use a $36,000 medicine for 3 years because I wanted to try 5asa and nicotine, and it worked for most of those 3 years.
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There are health things I would love if my insurance covered, but eliquid isn't one of them. Honestly, the race to see who could make the cheapest eliquid BY DRUG MAKERS is not one I want to see.
And, just by the way, if your eliquid is generic, it can, by federal law, contain 20% PLUS AN MINUS, so 40% variance possible every time they dispensed you a bottle. Not to mention all the weird and wacky different generic delivery devices allowed, like that SUCK. Some pharmacies will be willing to offer you the Generic manufactured by the company that developed it, and that is the ONLY generic I really want. Don't even get me started on this topic.
I mean, that's a bit like expecting the insurance company to pay for a glass of fine French wine because it's good for your heart.
You know they'd hand you a bottle of maddog.
Anna
And, just by the way, if your eliquid is generic, it can, by federal law, contain 20% PLUS AN MINUS, so 40% variance possible every time they dispensed you a bottle. Not to mention all the weird and wacky different generic delivery devices allowed, like that SUCK. Some pharmacies will be willing to offer you the Generic manufactured by the company that developed it, and that is the ONLY generic I really want. Don't even get me started on this topic.
I mean, that's a bit like expecting the insurance company to pay for a glass of fine French wine because it's good for your heart.
You know they'd hand you a bottle of maddog.
Anna
LOL anything with the word "Maddog" in it tends to be great.
You know, when I was young and naïve I used to think that "fortified" wine meant "fortified with vitamins and minerals." I was like, "Man, that's really smart, I mean that's marketing to your target demographic, the homeless. They have poor nutritional habits, I mean why not do a little something to keep them coming back for more for longer."
LOL, it was probably my older brother who witheringly explained. Then I met my husband who has actually DRANK sterno, and I will admit the whole thing made me SO curious I really wanted to try it, etc., only I figured it wasn't worth breaking sobriety for THAT.
But I have sampled Maddog and I don't think it's the worst of the fortified wines, not by a long shot, and my preferred "when I really need to have a hangover and call in sick," malt beverage was Mickey's preferably in wide mouthed bottles because if you are going to get/go crazy drunk, you might as well go with Irish. I mean who knows, probably whomever owns it now is like "Busch brewing company," but it's a nice thought.
I still think a bit of Vitamin C and like B12 might not go amiss... I mean....
But if anyone gets vitamins in Maddog, well, it's not going to be insurance companies, I don't think.
Anna
You know, when I was young and naïve I used to think that "fortified" wine meant "fortified with vitamins and minerals." I was like, "Man, that's really smart, I mean that's marketing to your target demographic, the homeless. They have poor nutritional habits, I mean why not do a little something to keep them coming back for more for longer."
LOL, it was probably my older brother who witheringly explained. Then I met my husband who has actually DRANK sterno, and I will admit the whole thing made me SO curious I really wanted to try it, etc., only I figured it wasn't worth breaking sobriety for THAT.
But I have sampled Maddog and I don't think it's the worst of the fortified wines, not by a long shot, and my preferred "when I really need to have a hangover and call in sick," malt beverage was Mickey's preferably in wide mouthed bottles because if you are going to get/go crazy drunk, you might as well go with Irish. I mean who knows, probably whomever owns it now is like "Busch brewing company," but it's a nice thought.
I still think a bit of Vitamin C and like B12 might not go amiss... I mean....
But if anyone gets vitamins in Maddog, well, it's not going to be insurance companies, I don't think.
Anna
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