The long goodbye to Ortho Evra

​The maker of the Ortho Evra patch recently announced that their patch will be discontinued in the U.S.. But if you use it, don’t start sweating yet—your health care provider or pharmacy may have plenty of Ortho Evra patches on hand. They will keep filling prescriptions until they run out.

There’s also a new patch called Xulane, made from the same ingredients as Ortho Evra. Xulane will also cost about the same as Ortho Evra—for women with health insurance, that’s zero dollars out-of-pocket. It will take a little while for insurance companies, health care providers, and pharmacies to catch up with this switch, but it sounds like women who use the patch won’t have to miss a beat (or a patch).