I have a love/hate relationship with Eliquis. I’ve been taking the blood thinner since 2019 when I experienced a ruptured heart valve and had open heart surgery.

Eliquis is one of the 10 expensive pharmaceuticals targeted by President Biden for negotiated price reductions in 2026.

News accounts say that Biden and Bristol Myers Squibb agreed to drop the price by 56 percent to $231 for a 30-day supply. I take two tablets each day.

Ginger and I have been covered by Medicare since we reached 65. We also opted for prescription coverage with our supplemental Advantage Plan.

So far this year, our out-of-pocket costs for Eliquis have been $1,008. Having reached the “doughnut hole,” my most recent refill cost us $472 for a 90-day supply, up from $126 for the previous refills. My prescription receipts say my insurer paid the $1,668 balance.

The Medicare doughnut hole starts when individuals and their plans reach $5,030 on covered drugs. It prevails until expenses reach $8,000 at which time catastrophic coverage kicks in reducing costs to 25 percent of the cost for covered drugs.

Waiting until 2026 seems like a long time to wait for that relief, but if Kamala Harris wins the presidential election, she has a slate of economic proposals that she says she would prioritize during her first 100 days in office.

The proposals include a number of healthcare policies aiming to lower prescription drug costs and alleviate medical debt.

Harris said she would cap out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 a month and cap yearly out-of-pocket costs for all prescription drugs at $2,000 for everyone, not just seniors on Medicare.

Eliquis has recently had another unexpected impact on my life — other than in the pocketbook. I’ve been a lifelong blood donor, but when filling out the Red Cross paperwork prior to donating in July, I encountered some new qualifying questions about the medications I take. One of those listed was Eliquis.

While going through the blood donor prescreening, I was disqualified from any additional donations as long as I am still taking Eliquis.

For an octogenarian, I’ve been relatively healthy and mobile. I still have most of my body parts and joints, although I don’t know how long the warranty will last. I was amused to read an obituary in the newspaper recently that a man complained of suffering from TMB, Too Many Birthdays.

My heart issues five years ago came as a major surprise. I didn’t have a heart attack, but one evening after an active day, I incurred shortness of breath and uncomfortable coughing. When I saw the physician’s assistant the next morning, I announced that I had self-diagnosed myself as having walking pneumonia. He didn’t concur.

His diagnosis was a heart murmur, and he immediately sent me to the emergency room at the Redmond hospital. The next morning when I developed atrial fibrillation, I was expedited by ambulance to St. Charles Hospital in Bend. In the next two weeks medical staff repaired my mitral valve, performed bypass surgery and installed a pacemaker.

I wasn’t a model patient. About 10 days into the hospitalization, I announced I was discharging myself despite the tubes entering and leaving my body. Ginger received a phone call from staff at an ungodly early hour to counsel me. Subsequently my hospital attire became an ugly yellow print gown, because staff had declared me to be a flight risk.

After 14 days I had recovered sufficiently to be discharged. And Eliquis has become part of my twice-daily routine, love it or not.