Pfizer's effort includes:

Offering insured patients a discount card to get Lipitor for $4 a month, far below the $25 average copayment for a preferred brand-name drug and below the $10 average copay for a generic drug. Pfizer is promoting this heavily through ads, information distributed at doctors' offices and its www.LipitorForYou.com site. Pfizer, based in New York, said Tuesday that sign-ups have exceeded its goals.
Paying pharmacies to mail Lipitor patients offers for the $4 copay card and to counsel patients that Lipitor lowers bad cholesterol more than rival drugs and helps prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Keeping U.S. marketing spending nearly level until the last minute, versus the typical two-thirds drop in a drug's final year under patent. From July through September, Pfizer spent almost $90 million on doctor sales calls and free samples, about the same as a year earlier, according to Cegedim Strategic Data. Ads targeting patients fell about 60 percent to $19 million. All that will soon taper off.
Negotiating unusual deals with some insurance plans and prescription benefit managers, the companies that process prescription claims for insurers or employers, to block pharmacists from dispensing generic Lipitor. Pfizer is giving them rebates that bring their cost for Lipitor down to the price of a generic or slightly less — if they agree to dispense only Lipitor for the six months before additional generic competition slashes prices. The move has generated some controversy and means many of the 3 million Americans taking Lipitor won't be able switch to the generic.

What do the deals mean for consumers? AARP says, "It may depend on whether they are covered by employer plans or other private health insurance companies, by Medicare Part D drug plans, or not insured at all. UnitedHealthCare, for example, one of the nation's largest insurers, has said that it will charge enrollees a higher copay for the generic than Lipitor."

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Generic Lipitor hits the market

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