Hey everyone. It’s Matt from Situation Positive. And I want to share with you a story of one of our community members that called us in crisis, and we were able to turn the situation positive. So this community member had Crohn’s and was paying $400 a month out-of-pocket for their Crohn’s prescription medication. I can’t even believe it, right?
That is too much money to pay. And one of the catch 22s of having a chronic illness is how can you afford not to pay right? If the Crohn’s had flared up, he wouldn’t have had much of a quality of life anyways. So he had to make sacrifices and he was spending this money each month and it was a financial burden.
But it was when he had to make, so he called us in and I said, “Look, we’re going to figure this out together.” So we looked up the manufacturer of his treatment. We Googled the financial assistance line for that pharmaceutical company. And we learned that with his treatment came a copay assistance card that had not been activated.
I told him the next thing he needs to do is call his doctor. And when he called his doctor, we learned that the doctor had given the co-pay assistance card with the prescription. So at this point, we start at the, is a pharmaceutical company, went to the doctor and now we have to go check out the pharmacy because maybe that’s where the chain broke down.
We go to the pharmacy and it turns out that the copay assistance card was in his file, but it was marked as, not active. The pharmacy tech who entered the prescription didn’t know how to turn on the copay assistance card. Because it didn’t take care of the whole prescription. There was still a co-pay, so it looked like there were two payers right in the system just didn’t know how to compute. Actually, check out this NY Times article on there is a pharmacy crisis going on that no one is talking about.
We got that turned on and his $400 a month payment dropped to $40 a month just like that. And it just brought up a question in my mind, like how many of you watching this video are in a similar situation? How many of you are paying way too much money a month for prescriptions that you need to manage your chronic illness.
There’s gotta be a better way. There’s gotta be a way we can turn that situation positive. If you’re like this community member and you struggling. Go ahead and reach out to us. Go to situationpositive.org. Join our community, and contact us. Because nobody should have to suffer in silence. You shouldn’t have to decide on whether or not to take your medicine to manage your chronic condition or give up other things in life.
It shouldn’t be that trade-off. And if you’re stuck there, come and join us come to reach out. We have people who can help. This is Matt Cavallo. Please remember to like share and subscribe. It helps our community grow. And if you want more information like this, visit us at situationpositive.org. Stay positive, everybody.
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