If you've ever put in an eyedrop, some of it has almost certainly spilled onto your eyelid or cheek.
The good news is the mess doesn't necessarily mean you missed. The bad news is that medicine you wiped off your face is wasted by design — and it's well-known to the drug companies that make the drops.
Eyedrops overflow our eyes because drug companies make the typical drop — from pricey glaucoma drugs to a cheap bottle of Visine — larger than a human eye can hold. Some are so large that if they were pills, every time you swallowed one, you'd toss another in the garbage.
The waste frustrates glaucoma experts like Dr. Alan Robin, whose patients struggle to make pricey bottles of drops last. He has urged drug companies to move to smaller drops — to no avail.
"They had no interest in people, their pocketbooks or what the cost of drugs meant," said Robin, a Baltimore ophthalmologist, researcher and adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.
ProPublica has been documenting the many ways health care dollars are being wasted. We've shown how hospitals throw out brand new supplies, nursing homes flush tons of unexpired medication and drug companies concoct costly combinations of cheap medication. Recently we described how arbitrary drug expiration dates cause us to toss safe and potent medicine.
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https://www.propublica.org/article/drug-companies-make-eyedrops-too-big-and-you-pay-for-the-waste?
