If you have Medicare and are having trouble paying for your prescriptions you should apply for 'Extra Help' with Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Costs through the Social Security Administration. For more information, go to Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage Part D helps you learn about Medicare prescription drug coverage and find and compare prescription drug plans. It also reduces the number of trips you need to take to the pharmacy. This means you do not need to call in multiple prescription refills.

Many pharmacies across the nation are participating in a new service that helps you coordinate your prescription refills so they are all due on the same day each month. Big Pharma should make a resolution for the New Year to work together to lower drug prices for everyone.Do you find it hard to manage your medications or keep them refilled on time? Now there is help. Instead, they continue to raise prices year after year-even several times a year-making health care more expensive for everyone. Big Pharma alone controls their prices-and they alone can lower them for Americans today. Again, these unnecessary added costs-all profit for manufacturers-are paid for through higher premiums and cost-sharing for all patients.ĭrugmakers create life-saving treatments and breakthrough cures. “A pharmaceutical manufacturer will cover the costs of a patient’s copay, sometimes even pay the entire deductible, to keep the patient on its more expensive product (instead of cheaper alternatives the patient’s health plan would pay for),” Gelfand writes.Īs a result, once the patient hits their maximum out-of-pocket limit, their employer will be responsible for paying 100% of the drug’s cost, and the drug manufacturer will go back to making a 100% profit, Gelfand said. James Gelfand, President of The ERISA Industry Committee, notes that these programs, too, function as a windfall for Big Pharma, in his letter to the editor of Kaiser Health News. Next, let’s look at patient assistance programs. “But your insurance plan is paying the rest of the much higher brand-name cost.” Those unnecessary added costs are paid for through higher premiums and cost-sharing for all patients. “If the manufacturer offers to cover your co-pay for the branded version, say $35, you might be happy to purchase it in place of the generic, which might have a $10 co-pay,” Dafny writes.

That’s important, Dafny notes, because generic medications lower costs for everyone. Dafny’s research found that as a result of the Massachusetts ban, privately insured residents were more likely to switch to a drug’s generic version-which costs far less than the brand drug, even with the coupon-than those in New Hampshire. In a recent story in Harvard Magazine, Harvard Business School Professor Leemore Dafny summarizes her recent research which compared claims data from Massachusetts, which bans a certain type of co-pay coupon, and New Hampshire, which allows them. But as two different experts recently pointed out, Big Pharma deserves its own lump of coal for using these schemes as clever ways to wrap up their out-of-control drug prices.įirst, consider copay coupons. Big Pharma would like you to believe it is a benevolent Santa Claus supporting copay coupons and patient assistance programs to make their prescription drugs more affordable.

Drug copay assistance programs