Help for the cost of medicine. Lets face it, treating MS, and for that matter, any disease is not a cheap thing. And many people describe me as being cheap (I prefer thrifty) so paying for these medicines "hurts" me especially when it changes cost after I made my FSA election. But in reality, it isn't that bad because we have insurance and my husband works. But for some people, the cost of the medicine is too much of a burden and so they don't take it. Almost every thing I have read suggests that taking the disease-modifying (DM) drugs for relapsing-remitting MS sooner rather than later is a VERY good thing if you are able to do it. But to be held back from doing this because of the cost is so upsetting to me. But I read in my Momentum magazine that the drug companies want to help. Every DM drug has some sort of assistance program. How cool is that? So at least there is hope of some sort of financial assistance in paying for these drugs. It is not a forever thing in most cases, but it is a help. Here are the contact #s for each of the drugs to see if you qualify for any assistance (as copied from the Momentum Magazine):
Avonex (Biogen Idec) - 1-800-456-2255 Novantrone (Serono) - 1-877-447-3243
Betaseron (Bayer) - 1-877-836-5724 Rebif (Serono) - 1-877-447-3243
Copaxone (Teva) - 1-800-887-8100 Tysabri (Biogen Idec) - 1-800-456-2255
A summary of all of these programs was in the last issue of Momentum, the magazine by the National MS Society. Here is the link to go to this article where I got the information above http://www.nationalmssociety.org/site/PageServer?pagename=HOM_LIB_momentum. The spring 2008 issue is the one with the information I summarized above. It is in the Healthy Living section.
Hope this is helpful.
Kristin
