All Posts Tagged With: "prescription drug samples"
Prescription Drug Samples to Free Clinics
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
This guidance represents the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) current thinking on this topic. It does not create or confer any rights for or on any person and does not operate to bind FDA or the public. An alternative approach may be used if such approach satisfies the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations. If you want to discuss an alternative approach, contact the FDA staff responsible for implementing this guidance. If you cannot identify the appropriate FDA staff, call the appropriate number listed on the title page of this guidance.
I. INTRODUCTION
This guidance provides information for free clinics that receive donated prescription drug samples from licensed practitioners or other charitable institutions. The guidance discusses concerns that have been expressed by certain individuals regarding regulatory requirements in 21 CFR 203.39 for drug sample donations. The guidance announces that FDA intends to propose revisions to § 203.39 to reduce the burden on free clinics while maintaining certain minimal requirements aimed at ensuring the integrity of the samples stored and dispensed by clinics. In the interim, FDA, in the exercise of its enforcement discretion, does not intend to object if a free clinic fails to comply with certain requirements in § 203.39.
FDA’s guidance documents, including this guidance, do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities. Instead, guidances describe the Agency’s current thinking on a topic and should be viewed only as recommendations, unless specific regulatory or statutory requirements are cited. The use of the word should in Agency guidances means that something is suggested or recommended, but not required.
Prescription Drug Survival Guide
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center – Dartmouth Medical School
An often unappreciated aspect of illness is the cost of recommended medications. For the patient without prescription drug coverage and especially those with limited financial means, the cost of prescription drugs can simply be overwhelming. Not infrequently, this leads to difficulty in affording medications, and some tough choices.
There are, thankfully, a variety of ways to cut your medication costs - often dramatically so - without compromising your health. This may involve working with your physician to choose a less costly medication, changing the way in which you shop, or taking advantage of a “Patient Assistance Program” which will help you obtain free medications directly from the pharmaceutical company.
This review is intended to help you on your journey to obtaining medications in a safe and cost-effective manner. It should not be considered a substitute for the advice from your own physician, but rather an added resource to use in conjunction with your own doctor’s recommendations.
IPI Expert Available to Discuss Why Prescription Drug Advertising Is the Solution, Not the Problem.
Institute for Policy Innovation
Dallas, TX. Sunday newspapers bombard readers with advertisements for department stores, office products, cars, clothing, and food. Yet no one is complaining that they can’t afford food because all the grocery stores advertise, or that GM, the number one advertiser in the country, could sell its cars cheaper if the company quit advertising.
Then why is it different for prescription drug advertising?
The critics of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising claim that 1) it increases drug costs, 2) it increases the dependency upon and use of drugs, 3) giving away free drug samples lures patients into using drugs, and 4) ads encourage patients to demand that doctors give them an advertised drug.
“Virtually all of these criticisms are misleading or wrong,” says IPI Visiting Scholar Dr. Merrill Matthews. “The health care system is changing from a doctor-directed system to a patient-directed one. Patients are hungry for information, and prescription drug ads provide at least some of that information. Ironically, if the critics succeed in limiting or removing these regulated ads, more and more people would be forced to go to the unregulated Internet for health care information.”
Matthews continued, “Prescription drug advertising isn’t the problem, it is the solution.”
Medicare Prescription Drug: Part D and Other Sources of Medication Help
The New Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
The Delaware County Office of Services for the Aging
The first ever federally subsidized drug program for seniors took effect January 1, 2006. Under this program, private health insurers offer limited insurance coverage for prescription drugs to those persons who are Medicare recipients. This includes disabled persons who also receive Medicare benefits. The drug benefit is available only through private insurance companies who contract with Medicare to provide drug plans.
Keep in mind the following points:
1. The program is solely voluntary, although there is a financial penalty for those who do not sign up during the initial enrollment period.
2. To obtain the coverage, you will pay a monthly premium which, on an average, will run from $11.00 up to $35.00 per month, or more, depending on the coverage you choose. However, it will be waived in instances of those with limited income. Currently, that is $14,355 per year for a single person and $19,245 per year for a married couple.
3. Be careful when you decide to enroll because you normally can only switch plans one time per year.
The standard plan provides for a $250.00 deductible, after which you will pay 25% of the drug cost up to $2,250.00 per year. Coverage will then stop completely until your drug costs reach a total of $5,100.00. This is sometimes called “doughnut hole.” In other words, after you reach the $2,250.00 limit described earlier, you are responsible for the next $2,850.00 in drug costs yourself. After that point, Medicare will pay about 95% of the cost. This is what is known as the “catastrophic coverage.” This means that once you have $3,600.00 in out-of-pocket costs in 2006, then the Part D Program will pay the majority of your drug cost. Be careful, because only the covered drugs under the plan count toward your out-of-pocket costs.
Save Money on Prescription Drugs with Free Samples
Associated Content
Whenever you have to go to the doctor, it seems like you almost always get a prescription for something or another! Thanks to modern medicine, there’s a pill or injection for just about every sort of infection or virus that we can get, with the exception of a few of the major things that we haven’t been able to solve yet. Most of us take the prescription we’re given, go to the local pharmacy, pay whatever the fee is, take the pills, and go on in life. We don’t think that we could save some money, since we -need- the prescriptions, but there’s a way to get the prescription drugs you need and save money in the process!
Drug companies have a financial incentive for doctors to use their prescriptions, so it makes sense that they’ll do what they can to prescribe their drugs more often. By law they can’t pay the doctors to prescribe drugs, but they can give out free samples to the doctors to give to their patients, and they do it all the time.
Doctors don’t fill prescriptions, and they have no need to keep the prescription samples, so often times you can get all sorts of free samples for a prescription that you need. This will save you from having to go to the drug store at all! After your physician diagnoses you and provides you a prescription, just ask if they have any samples of the drug that you could take. More often than not they have several weeks worth of whatever prescription you need in samples!
Reduce Prescription Costs: Prescription Drug Samples
Anytime that you are starting a new prescription medication or changing to a lower costing medication, ask your doctor for samples of the new medication. This is to ensure that you don’t spend a lot of money for a full prescription bottle to find out later that the medication doesn’t work correctly for you.