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Coping with the High Costs of Presciptions
It’s easy to find people who think that the cost of prescription drugs is too high. It’s a little harder to find people willing to admit they have trouble paying that cost.
And yet, insured or uninsured, rich or poor, old or young—at some point most patients have trouble paying for a prescription. A Gallup survey found that 21 percent of Americans had trouble paying for health care or medicines in 2008.
Karen Merrill, a heart disease survivor from New Hampshire, says she pays between $375 and $400 a month in prescription co-pays for medications for herself, her husband and her daughter. The family has health insurance through her husband’s job, but she admits that there was a time “when I just stopped taking the medicines, because we couldn’t make the other expenses.”
Her husband convinced her to start taking the drugs again, “because he said there’s nothing more important than your health,” Merrill recalls. But the impact on the family has been significant. “I had my house all paid off, and now I have a mortgage again,” she says with tears in her voice.
“Many people have trouble affording medications,” says John Michael O’Brien, a prescriptions cost expert at College of Notre Dame of Maryland. “You shouldn’t feel guilt or shame about it.” Instead, he and others have ideas for savings that won’t put your health at risk.
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