How You Can Get Assistance With Your Prescription Medication
September 9th, 2009 | by Clare |
The present fiscal recession has affected several people’s power to pay for their medicine. Help with prescription medicine is available. Some prescription medicine companies are responding with superior drug benefit. Merck, which manufacturers Singulair for asthma, Januvia for diabetes and Fosamax for osteoporosis, increased the amount of total yearly income a family can receive and still meet the criteria for free prescriptions in March. Folks making less than $43,000 and families of four making lower than $88,000 now can meet the requirements for assistance with medication. Merck says it has helped 1.6 million patients with $1.9 billion of prescriptions over the last seven years. Help for prescription medicine is available from other companies also.
“We are committed to helping patients, and that commitment is evident in the $140 million of financial assistance we provided in 2008,” representative Shannon Altimari from drug manufacturer Biogen claims. Biogen Idec provides help for prescription drug Avonex and Tysabri which is used for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. Pfizer announced a program previously this year called Maintain that offers complimentary prescription medication to out of work people who require prescription drug aid. Maintain is only one of more than a few patient assistance programs that the manufacturer provides.
AstraZeneca just announced that it was changing its prescription medicine assistance program to supply aid more readily to particular patients. The company’s program offers free drugs or low-cost prescription drugs to uninsured, low-income patients. AstraZeneca said in a statement that it “would immediately extend assistance to qualifying patients who have lost their jobs, had their incomes reduced or had a change in marital status or family size”. The company said these types of individuals had been having troubles qualifying for prescription medicine since their tax returns showed too high an income. Qualifying patients can at present sign up by providing certification of their recent wages and household size, AstraZeneca said.
Kevin Fisher is a patient that has experienced such problems. The 39 -year-old gardner was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2004 . His income from social security and a minor disability policy only just covers his mortgage, health bills, and other living expenses. “I have tried all sorts of things to find out if I can obtain prescription drug help,” he says. He called the prescription companies, Social Security, and his physician’s personnel. He has also followed quite a lot of leads on the Internet and at the end of the day found a company that would see to all of the red tape for him.
His medicine cost over $225 a month and his health care costs are more than $225 per month. “There were times when I have had to pass over taking my prescriptions for a day or two,” he admits. He is not convinced what the future holds for him but at least at present he is in receipt of the aid with medication that he requires.