Attention Fellow T1s! My insurance plan through school has a cap for prescription coverage and am now having to pay for my prescriptions out of pocket. Does anyone know of services that can help me pay?
I am not working and am almost out of test strips.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Kiwi
I have heard that Johnson & Johnson (parent company of One Touch) has a program that can help with strips but I have no direct experience with it. As far as insulin you may try the manufactuers patient assistance program. These are mainly reserved for people without insurance but I was told Novo will help people in the Medicare donut hole so they may be able to help you. You do have to go through a funky process of being denied based on already having insurance and then reapplying after which they will help (dosen’t make much sense to me).
You can check out the J&J help at www.jjpaf.org. If you can get any details about that please post what you found.
Good luck!
Thank you so much for the information. I went to the website you suggested and a few others. I made a few phone calls. Turns out that I am not eligible for assistance because I currently have insurance! I am so inbetween a rock and a hard place.
I had the same problem when I was in college (a few years ago). I was eligible for the patient assistance programs for my insulin because, while I had insurance through my school, my prescription drug coverage under that insurance was inadequate and had a cap just like yours. I think I ended up being eligible because while I technically had prescription drug coverage, it basically ran out and I no longer had any coverage. Does that make sense? I would double check those program requirements to make sure. I used one through Sanofi-Aventis and also through Lilly (one for Lantus & one for Humalog). I never had to use any assistance programs for test strips, so I can’t help you out on that front. Those were covered under some other part of my college insurance plan.
If you can find no assistance try Wal Mart for their Reli-On strips. You can get 50 strips for about $20. I haven’t been able to find them a whole lot cheaper than this.
Kiwi,
People who fall into the Medicare “donut hole” are in the same place as you are. There is a website called rxbattle.com that offers a discount card accepted by major pharmacies at no cost for the card. It doesn’t matter if you have insurance or not. I know they cover insulin and pills, I’m not sure about strips but you might want to check it out just in case. They really can save you money and I just pray they have test strips. Good Luck!