Two isn’t always better than one. Just ask patients caught in the confusion of two national drug codes for the same cholesterol-lowering medicine.

A national drug code is a unique string of digits used to identify a medication for billing. In the beginning, an innovative PCSK9 inhibitor for treating stubbornly high cholesterol had just one. Then the drug’s manufacturer dropped the price by 60%. Despite being the same medication – just at a lower price – the medication was then assigned a second code.