An old school but worthy directory of prescription drug resources

Hey there—

Welcome to the third installment in our series on dealing with the wild cost of prescription drugs.

We started by creating a price comparison tool inspired by one of our listeners — whose story we recounted on the podcast. Then, we zoomed out to suggest an order of operations for getting your meds for less.

This week, we’re looking at Patient Assistance Programs — PAPs for short — which are need-based programs offered by drugmakers and charitable organizations. If you qualify, you’ll get access to steeply discounted or free medication or other benefits.

We’ll get into what you need to know about PAPs — including important caveats — and why a website from 1997, NeedyMeds, can be a handy way to sort through them (with a bit of guidance).

What you need to know about PAPs

You’ve gotta apply, you’ve gotta qualify, and you may need some luck on top of that. And of course it all varies.

Applying: Can be simple, or more-involved. Sometimes you have to submit proof of (low) income, other times they take your word for it. Sometimes your provider has to sign off, sometimes no.

Qualifying: Mostly they look at income and family size — in other words, household income compared to a benchmark like 2 times the federal poverty line. Some only cover people with insurance, and others only help people without insurance.

Luck: Some programs have a limit on how much help they issue per year, and if your application arrives after they’ve hit that limit… better luck next time. Ugh.

Also this: Like other stuff we’ve looked at to deal with unaffordable drug prices, critics argue that PAPs are kind of a byproduct of how the pharma industry works — part of the problem.

But if you’re stuck using a really expensive drug for a chronic condition, let’s not ignore them.

What is NeedyMeds? And why use it to find PAPs?

In the 1990s, a family medicine doctor named Rich Sagall first heard of patient assistance programs from a friend who was a medical social worker. Together, the pair set out to make PAPs easier to find. Sagall taught himself HTML, and the site NeedyMeds was born.

Over the years, the site grew into a sort of super-directory for all kinds of medical resources — listings include a discount coupon program, as well as dog-walking for sick folks and disease-specific camps for kids.

Today, NeedyMeds still has somewhat of a 1997 vintage feel to it. And it’s no longer the only way to find PAPs online. You can easily Google your drug’s name + “assistance program.”

But here’s what sets NeedyMeds apart:

The site compiles the PAPs for each drug into one place, listing their phone numbers and websites, and sharing more information about eligibility requirements — which vary depending on the program — than we’ve seen elsewhere.

With a little guidance (below) we think that cuts a lot of steps out for you.

How to search NeedyMeds for PAPs

Type in the name of your drug. Because some prescription drugs have multiple formulations, make sure to click on the one you need.

For instance, if you search the drug Abilify, you’ll get half a dozen choices. Do you take the injection? The tablets? Extended release? Check your prescription to make sure.

Once you’ve clicked on the correct formulation of your drug, the assistance options available will appear.

Let’s check out what comes up when searching the brand name drug Otezla, which treats psoriasis.

On NeedyMeds, PAPs are symbolized with a cute little pill and tablet illustration. The pill/tablet on the bottom right (circled above) takes you to a page listing all the programs available for this drug.

(That other icon takes you to coupons — worth checking out if you’re here. But there are lots of other ways to find coupons.)

For Otezla, two things come up: the Amgen Safety Net Foundation and the Patient Access Network Foundation (PAN).

The Amgen Safety Net Foundation offers Otezla for free to patients who qualify. PAN offers cash to patients dealing with a range of conditions facing high medical costs. (Both are charities backed — at least in part — by the pharmaceutical industry.)

Once you click on a program name for more information, scroll down to find the eligibility requirements.

This level of detail is what gives NeedyMeds a leg up over other ways of searching for PAPs — especially since you’ll see a big variety of processes and criteria for the programs offered by drugmakers.

For instance, let’s look at the Amgen one:

You can see here: These details help figure out if you might actually qualify for a given program.

You’ll also find a link to apply right on this NeedyMeds page, under a section called, helpfully, “Program Application and Forms.” And near the top, there’s a phone number for the program.

Heads up – NeedyMeds has some quirks

When you click on “Program Application and Forms” some of those links open up an application right there in your browser.

Pretty cool, but: you need to scroll past two pages of NeedyMeds stuff — including a page advertising their unrelated coupon program — before you hit the application itself.

And in some cases, we found the links in the PAP directory confusing — and at least one led to something that wasn’t a PAP at all, but rather an online pharmacy.

NeedyMeds told us they work to make sure resources are listed in the right place and to keep stuff up to date. And in fact, you can see when pages were last edited.

What if I don’t think I qualify?

…Or you might be an edge case?

Don’t give up, as co-founder Rich Sagall told us.

“If you find that you don’t quite qualify but you’re close,” he said, “apply anyway.”

And he says: Check back for updates periodically, because the eligibility requirements can change.

If you try out NeedyMeds — or have other experiences with PAPs that we should know about — we’d love to hear from you.

And if you haven’t checked out the other installments in our Prescription Drug Playbook series — two First Aid Kit newsletters (1, 2) and one podcast episode so far — we hope you’ll find them useful. There’s one more of each coming next week.

Till then,

— Emily Pisacreta, senior producer and FAK editor & Lauren Gould, intern