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Comment by scottshea | Hacker News Reader

My daughter has used the Auvi-Q as an alternative. In addition to the active injectors they provided a test one that helped her when the time came: https://www.auvi-q.com

I have not heard of any issues with Auvi-Q since it was reintroduced

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Auvi-Q's pricing is weird. It's free if you have insurance (whether or not insurance pays for it), and free if your household makes < $100k. If you pay cash for it because neither of those is the case, it's $360. And if insurance pays for it, it's $4500.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/01/19/epipen...

That said, I have it too; it was free to me because I have insurance. But this area really needs proper regulation and cost controls.

I asked my son's allergist about those, and was surprised to learn that they cost an order of magnitude more than epi pens. He wouldn't prescribe them because he refuses to support that kind of pricing.

BTW epi pens also come with a tester.

(We have insurance so we pay a small copay for epi pens and auvi-q would be free.)

Interesting. Our allergist said almost the exact opposite in that they refused to prescribe EpiPen because it was so much higher than Auvi-Q.

And I wonder when EpiPen started issuing testers. We had them for years (me first, then my daughter) and never got one.

Cost to patient, or cost to insurance. Auvi-Q is much greater cost to insurance, less to patient. The former is still a major concern given how that leads to increased premiums and general medical pricing inflation, even if it briefly benefits the individual.

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