Faith in drug companies restored...

So until today, I was like many people.
"Drug companies charge too much"
"All they did was tweak one little thing and now they get to maintain their brand status"
"Forget this, I'll just use ibuprofen"

Many of those thoughts are true. There has been many a time where I felt bad for dispensing medications to a patient b/c the cash price was so ridiculous and the insurance only covered so much of the cost.

However, today my faith was restored. We have a patient (call him "Joe") who is not in the best financial situation nor do they have insurance. Now, this is not a discussion as to why Joe does not have insurance. This is not my business nor should I pester them about getting insurance. Anyways, my rotation partner and I were given the duty to optimize this patient's meds. So we went up to talk to Joe and figure out if he was compliant, if he was refilling on time, how was he actually using the meds. After seeing what the next steps were for therapy and doing some $4 list research, we determined that optimization was still gonna cost a pretty penny :(

Then my Asian side kicked in. I started looking for coupons for the various medications and here is what I came across:

http://www.proairhfa.com/pdf/TEVA-Patient-Assistance-Program-Application.pdf
http://www.bridgestoaccess.com/

HUZZAH!!! Later we went and talked to the patient and gave him the packets of information. We ran through the list of requirements and we're pretty confident he qualifies for the assistance programs. Next step is for the doctor to prescribe the meds he needs that are made by the corresponding manufacturer and I think we're in luck...