Information on free or low-cost medications provided by pharmaceutical companies
Many pharmaceutical companies have some form of a Patient Assistance Program (PAP), which are designed to help people without health coverage or drug benefits obtain their medicines at little or no cost. However, such programs often are not well advertised, and many doctors do not even know they exist. The best way to find out if you are eligible is to use free internet database tools to search for your particular medications (some of the best ones are listed below), and/or contact the manufacturing company directly and ask them about PAPs and eligibility requirements. Although PAPs have different standards of eligibility, all will require a doctor's consent and signature. It can be difficult to get your doctor to complete the forms in a timely fashion - to help the process, fill out as much of them as you can before giving them to your doctor, make sure to bring all the information he/she will need with you, emphasize that this assistance is essential if you are to continue with your treatment, and make sure to acknowledge that they are busy and thank them for their time.
NAMI has recently started endorsing the
Partnership for Prescription Assistance, a new program that seeks to boost enrollment in existing Patient Assistance Programs by helping consumers identify and apply for programs for which they may be eligible. This may be a good place to start if you are unfamiliar with Assistance Programs that might work for you - however, we don't yet know how successful the Partnership is at enrolling people in good programs, or how much they may charge for their service. If anyone has experiences to share about the Partnership for Prescription Assistance (good or bad), please email the schizophrenia.com administration at:
szwebmaster@yahoo.com. Visit their website (
http://www.pparx.org) or call
1-888-477-2669 if you are interested.