Speaker 1: Hello, this is Dr. Eric Bricker and thank you for watching A Health Care Z. Today's topic is pharma patient assistant programs, especially for the uninsured. Now, because of coronavirus here in America, we now have 43 million Americans who have lost their jobs and about 47% of those jobs, so in other words about half of those jobs, provided health insurance for those employees and their family members. So unemployment now stands at around 15%. Remember for the Great Recession of 2008-2009, it peaked at 10%, so it's almost like 50% higher in terms of unemployment. So just the degree of uninsured people is going to impact people's prescriptions. That's one of the most important things that losing insurance is going to impact because, as we're going to see here, there are medications that people need to survive that their insurance would mostly pay for and they would either have a very small or no co-pay for many of these medications. And now if they're losing insurance, this medication becomes incredibly expensive, so it behooves us to look into the pharmaceutical company patient assistant programs. And we're going to look at three medications. The first class of medications we're going to look at is insulin. Of course, the reason that we're looking at this is because if you have diabetes, especially type 1 diabetes, and you stop taking your insulin, like you will die. There's a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, and it is life-ending if you do not take your insulin. So Lantus is long-acting insulin. It's one of the most common forms of insulin. And there is a patient assistance program from its maker where you can get a month's supply for $99, which is 10 vials or 10 packs for their insulin pens, for a month. So that's 167 units a day. That is a lot of units per day. A lot of people only need like 10, 20, 40 units per day. So to get the equivalent of 167 units per day, that's a lot. Now the price of $99 for a month's supply is guaranteed for 12 months. It doesn't say that it's open-ended. It'll go beyond that. And this is an offer from Sanofi. Okay, now the next long-acting insulin that's not quite as popular as Lantus, but it's still fairly commonly used, is Levamir. Now they have a program that's a little different, where they will actually give you 90 days of free Levamir if your job loss is COVID-19 related. And you don't have to have any proof of income, low income, in order to qualify for it. Whereas for the Sanofi program, and typically for the Levamir program, non-COVID related, you got to submit pay stubs, your tax return, you have to show unemployment insurance payments that you're getting. So there's a lot of paperwork that you have to fill out to show that you are indigent and needy, in addition to not having insurance, in order to qualify for these programs. Now, in addition to you the patient having to do it, your doctor needs to fill out part of this paperwork as well. You will not qualify for this program unless your doctor fills out the doctor section of the paperwork. So just know that's an incredibly important part. Okay, next up we have Humira, which is the highest grossing or highest revenue drug in America and in the world. It's an injection that's given about every two weeks. A person gives it to themselves at home typically. It's for things like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease and psoriatic arthritis. And their program just says that you may be eligible for Humira for free if you don't have insurance. And then it gives some income guidelines. It says for a family of four, if your family brings in less than $157,200, that you may qualify for free Humira. Okay, that's fairly high. $157,000 for a family of four is more than 600% of the federal poverty level. It puts you in like the 85th percentile of income. In other words, it'll cover like 85% of households because they make less than that amount. Pretty high number. Likewise, for singles, if you make less than $76,560 a year, you also could qualify for it. And that's from AbbVie. That's the makers of Humira. There's an online application process for that. So again, it's a little unclear. You don't get all the details up front, but there is a process and there are options for you. And that's what really gets me to the summary here. Look, this is a process to sign up for a pharmaceutical company patient assistance program. It is a process. What do processes involve? They involve time. They involve effort. Like you, the patient, are going to have to actually work to do this. It involves the doctor's office helping you out. They have to do their part too. And it requires paperwork. You've got to get these pay stubs and these forms, etc, etc. So you've got to be organized. So probably the biggest thing about this is that it takes time. So like if you run out of your insulin and you don't have insurance and you're like, oh shoot, I don't have any insulin, you're not immediately going to be able to qualify for this. It's going to take time. So really if you have just lost your insurance or you're about to lose your insurance and you still have some insulin at home, it would behoove you to start the process for the patient assistance program now instead of waiting until it's too late. And that's my point for today. Thank you for watching A Health Care Z.