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What tier is atorvastatin?

Is atorvastatin covered by your insurance? Find out what tier it falls under, how pricing works, and what impacts coverage for statins and heart meds.
Ashley Broadwater, writer for SingleCare
By | Jul. 8, 2025 Medically reviewed by Ashley Wong, Pharm. D.
Three Rx bottles: What tier is atorvastatin?

Key takeaways

  • Most insurance plans list atorvastatin, a cholesterol medication, as tier 1, the cheapest tier.

  • Several factors play into a medication’s tier, like whether it has a generic and how expensive it is.

  • Search for your insurance plan’s formulary online to see which tier atorvastatin and other medications are included.

In this article:

Atorvastatin, or atorvastatin calcium, is a prescription drug (not an over-the-counter medication) in the statin drug class. Taken by mouth in the form of a tablet or oral suspension (liquid), atorvastatin is an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor and antihyperlipidemic. Atorvastatin is the generic name for the brands Lipitor and Atorvaliq. It lowers “bad” cholesterol levels and increases “good” cholesterol in the blood. This can be particularly helpful for patients who need to focus on preventing heart disease and other cardiovascular events. Most insurance plans cover atorvastatin.

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What tier is atorvastatin?

In health insurance, “tiers” are groups that categorize how much an insurance company will pay for a medication. There are four tiers; the lower tiers mean patients have to pay less. So, where does atorvastatin fall?

“From the mid-2010s to present, it has been a tier-1 medication on nearly all commercial insurance formulary lists, Medicare D plans, and state Medicaid formularies,” says Dr. Brian Pacanowski, Pharm.D., director of experiential education and an assistant professor of clinical science in High Point University’s Fred Wilson School of Pharmacy.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s the cheapest statin. “Occasionally, other statins will come in cheaper,” says Dr. Yu-Ming Ni, MD, a board-certified cardiologist and lipidologist at MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.

Patients can see where atorvastatin falls on their insurance plan’s formularies. Here are some common ones:

While a medication’s tier depends on the specific insurance plan, other common tier 1 drugs include the following generics: lisinopril, amlodipine, atenolol, benazepril, carvedilol, chlorthalidone, diltiazem, glipizide, quinapril, sertraline, alendronate, citalopram, clonidine, enalapril maleate, finasteride, fluoxetine, fosinopril, gemfibrozil, glimepiride, glyburide, labetalol, metformin hcl, nifedipine, terazosin, trandolapril, triamterene, pioglitazone, bupropion hcl, clopidogrel, irbesartan, telmisartan, latanoprost, olmesartan, and quetiapine.

Factors influencing atorvastatin’s tier status

When it comes to tier status, it matters whether the medication has a generic form. “Because most statins are available as generics, most will be on the tier-1 list of most commercial insurance plans, as well as Medicare Part D plans and state Medicaid plans,” says Dr. Pacanowski.

Not all are, though. He mentions the exception of fluvastatin. “Drug availability issues and a higher-than-average average wholesale price (AWP) have caused this medication to be removed from many tier-1 lists.”

According to Dr. Pacanowski, other factors that affect the tier include whether the medication remains on the market (and atorvastatin has) and how well it works (pretty well). Regarding the latter, he points to a 2023 study that found atorvastatin was prescribed the most, followed by simvastatin.

Last but not least, according to Dr. Ni, the fact that other statins are available—and are sometimes cheaper—affects atorvastatin’s tier status. Simvastatin is one of those medications, while rosuvastatin is not.

Are cholesterol medications covered by insurance?

Again, coverage isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer—at least to some degree. “Coverage for these various statins depends on insurance to insurance,” Dr. Ni says, “but usually, insurance plans will prefer other statins besides rosuvastatin, atorvastatin, and pitavastatin.”

As mentioned earlier, insurance plans also look at the AWP, which explains why some other high cholesterol medications are on higher tiers. “Injectable PC5K9 inhibitors, such as evolocumab (Repatha) and alirocumab (Praluent), are typically on tiers 3 or 4, requiring prior authorization in most cases due to approximate AWPs of $1400 monthly,” Dr. Pacanowski says. “If the details of the patient’s case meet the defined exceptions, the insurance plan will cover the medication, usually at the highest copay allowed by the plan.”

Examples of cholesterol medications include lovastatin, pravastatin, fenofibrate, and gemfibrozil. 

Combination drugs usually have higher AWPs and therefore are on higher tiers, too, he adds, giving the example of Vytorin, which combines ezetimibe and simvastatin.

Most insurance companies will use the same methods to classify blood pressure medications, Dr. Pacanowski says. The main difference is that blood pressure medications can fall into different drug classes. 

“The drugs inside these classes may ‘compete with each other’ for tier status, but there is very rarely ‘competition’ between classes,” Dr. Pacanowski explains. “Beta blockers are compared to other beta blockers, diuretics to other diuretics, ACE inhibitors to other ACE inhibitors, etc.”

Some examples of blood pressure medications—like calcium channel blockers, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and diuretics—include hydrochlorothiazide, valsartan, furosemide, metoprolol succinate, metoprolol tartrate, propranolol HCl, losartan potassium, and ramipril. 

The good news is that the medications are often cheap or even free. “I generally find most patients to be paying very little for their blood pressure and statin medications,” Dr. Ni says. “In fact, depending on the insurance plan or prescription drug plan, patients will pay zero dollars for their medications, including atorvastatin.”

According to Dr. Pacanowski, atorvastatin can be free for many reasons: the copay for generic drugs, or tier-1 medications, is $0, the patient reached their plan deductible, the patient reached their out-of-pocket maximum, or “preventative medications” are free with the patient’s plan.

Without insurance, the out-of-pocket cost for atorvastatin is around $1,500 per year. However, people can buy it at a cheaper cost using a SingleCare prescription discount card.

Thankfully, finding the drug coverage details for various medications is pretty easy. Here are the steps: 

  1. Go to a search engine (like Google), type in the name of your insurance company, and then type in “formulary” and the year. 
  2. The right link will likely be one of the first. Click it. 
  3. To find atorvastatin on the list, simultaneously press “Control” and “f” on your keyboard if you have a PC, or “Command” and “f” if you have a Mac, and type in “atorvastatin.” 
  4. From there, you should be able to find atorvastatin listed, or not listed, as well as its tier status. The latter is usually to the right of the name.

People can also call the customer service number on the back of the ID card, Dr. Pacanowski says, or go to the insurance website, look for their “preferred drug list,” and scroll to “cholesterol medications” or “cholesterol-lowering agents.”

When looking at various medications covered by insurance, it’s important to consider that some forms of the same medication will be cheaper than others. “All insurance companies will have a list of tier pricing for their medications,” Dr. Ni says. “Generic medications in general are going to be cheaper than branded medications, although sometimes the discount is not very much.”