How You Can Receive Assistance With Your Prescriptions
The modern economic recession has affected countless people’s capability to pay for their prescription drugs. Help with prescription medicine is available. Some prescription companies are responding with improved prescription medicine relief. Merck, which manufacturers Singulair for asthma, Januvia for diabetes and Fosamax for osteoporosis, increased the amount of total annual income a household can get paid and nonetheless become certified for free prescription medicine in March. People making less than $43,000 and families of four making lower than $88,000 at present can meet the requirements for aid with prescription medication. Merck says it has helped 1. million patients with $1.9 billion of prescription medication 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 maker Biogen says. 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 provides complimentary prescription medicine to out of work Americans who need prescription aid. Maintain is only one of numerous patient assistance programs that the manufacturer provides.
AstraZeneca just announced that it was changing its medication assistance program to provide aid more readily to a number of individuals. The company’s program offers free prescription drugs or low-cost prescription medication to uninsured, low-income individuals. 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 manufacturer said these types of individuals had been having troubles qualifying for prescription medicine as their tax returns showed too high an income. Qualifying Americans can now join by providing certification of their present salary and household size, AstraZeneca said.
Dennis Smith is a patient that has experienced such problems. The 53 -year-old janitor was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2006 . His income from social security and a lesser disability policy hardly covers his mortgage, medical bills, and other living expenses. “I have tried all sorts of things to check if I can get prescription drug assistance,” he says. He called the prescription medicine companies, Social Security, and his physician’s office. He has moreover followed a number of leads on the Internet and ultimately found a company that would see to all of the red tape for him.
His prescription drug cost over $600 a month and his medical costs are more than $300 per month. “There were times when I have had to miss taking my prescription medicine for a day or two,” he admits. He is not convinced what the future holds for him but at least nowadays he is receiving the assistance with prescription medication that he requires.
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