Necessary Medicines
The New York Times reported on Monday, April 14 that Co-Payments Soar for Drugs With High Prices as the nation’s largest health insurers struggle to keep their profits high and their payments for health care low. The new pricing system forces patients taking name-brand medications to pay a percentage of the cost rather than a fixed co-payment of $10 to $30 a month for each medication they take.
The situation, and plans for a public demonstration in San Francisco during the AHIP annual meeting on June 19th are outlined in Insurers target the sickest: Say bye bye to $20 prescription co-pays.
This means that the burden of increasingly expensive health care now affects the insured, who may now have to pay thousands of dollars a month for medications in addition to their high monthly premiums and treatment co-pays and deductibles. America’s sickest citizens are once again being abandoned by a system that was originally designed to spread the costs of their care across a large pool that includes healthier people. Insurers say the new system will keep everyone’s premiums down, just at the time of year that Americans are discovering that they must pay double or more for the same health insurance they had last year. That’s not a very impressive system, considering that all other developed nations on the planet have universal health care.
Thus this installment of the series of inexpensive health care tips will offer some alternatives for obtaining drugs that may be beyond your ability to afford.
Because large public hospitals and smaller hospitals serving the public in smaller towns make up the backbone of the American health care delivery system are also being driven to bankruptcy by greedy insurers who increasingly refuse to pay for covered services [see Health Insurance Racket as Organized Crime and People of New York vs. Vampires], the gaps in our system are quickly widening and threatening to sink doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics in the process.
The first place a strapped citizen should try to contact, even if s/he does not qualify for Medicaid or other subsidized health care plans is the Department of Health and Human Services in their area – the good ol’ Health Department (search for “health department” and your state or city). Most health departments offer both sick and well child services, just call ahead to find out what days they are available – you don’t want to be taking a well child in for immunizations or flu shots on sick child day, where they’ll be exposed to God knows what. Immunizations and flu shots are one of their specialties. The same services are available on certain days for adults, just make your inquiries ahead of time. If medications are prescribed, the patient is usually informed of generic alternatives, referred to pharmacies that partner with HHS for low cost, and some will give brochures for pharmaceutical company free drug programs if the medication is expensive or long-term.
Some localities also offer free or low cost clinics staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses a few days a week. Again, these physicians will usually know if there are generic drugs that can substitute for higher cost name brand drugs, and prescribe accordingly. Walmart offers $4 prescriptions on a general basis, and some states also have drug assistance programs. Often, just getting prescriptions filled at Walmart or another participating chain pharmacy is cheaper than using the deductible schedule, even for the insured or Medicare/Medicaid patients.
If you or someone in your family suffers from a condition for which the best drug treatments are solely brand name and very expensive (or you take a sufficient number of prescriptions to put a serious dent in your income), the big pharmaceutical companies offer free and low cost prescriptions directly via funded programs. If your doctor or health department doesn’t give you the information you need, you can search on the manufacturer’s name and go to their website. They usually have readily accessible links to their programs, or you can do an internal search. SelectCare Benefits Network has some programs and offers useful links for health care professionals as well as patients to get them started on finding free medicines and prescription assistance programs.
In the next installment in this series, we’ll take a look at ways to gain access to doctors, tests and (not prescription) treatments for conditions without going broke. Good luck to all out there as we weather the necessary growing pains that accompany our shift from private, for-profit health care to a modern system that offers health care to all citizens without fomenting class warfare. Keep your chin up, there ARE alternatives!
Links:
Discount Drug Company Assistance Programs
Department of Health and Human Services
Walmart $4 prescriptions
SelectCare Benefits Network
Previous Posts About Health and Health Care:
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – Intro
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – 2
Inexpensive Health Care Tips – 3
Medical Rationing and Medical Tourism
Basic Health Maintenance: Part I
Basic Health Care Maintenance: Part II
Shoestring Budget: Nutrition Posts