What to Do When You Can’t Afford Your Medication

There’s a morality to medicine. For many in our community, medicine is not a luxury; it is a necessity. The high cost of medication or expensive insurance plans can prevent some people from affording their essential maintenance medications. As many as 35% of Alabamians have stopped taking their medication due to high costs. We see this problem, and we have adopted the responsibility to do something about it.

Pure Life Pharmacy helps with drug costs in 3 specific ways: offering low-cost generics, free antibiotics, and a pay-it-forward program called RxAngels. In this article, we’ll look at how these three programs work toward ensuring patients get the essential medications they need.

Low-Cost Generics
Our pharmacy can carry and dispense any medication; however, we focus our efforts on affordable generic medications. With a valid prescription, we offer generic medications to the public at wholesale prices. We offer over 1,000 medications for less than $10 per month. Search for your medication(s) and respective costs on our website. Whether you have insurance or not, we skip the entire insurance process and sell the prescription medications directly to you at wholesale prices. Many of our patients have insurance but bypass it because our cash price is lower than their co-pay.

Are these the same high-quality generics at the Big Chain Pharmacies?
Yes. We offer the same generic medications from the same manufacturers as the Big Chain Pharmacies. We strategically search to purchase the lowest cost medications for our customers from various wholesalers.

Free Antibiotics
One of the best ways to make a prescription affordable is to give it away for free! The following is a list of free antibiotics we have available to any patient with a valid prescription:

• Amoxicillin (generic Amoxil)
• Cephalexin (generic Keflex)
• Ciprofloxacin (generic Cipro)
• Penicillin (generic PenVK)
• SMZ-TMP (generic Bactrim DS)

RxAngels Pay-It-Forward Program
RxAngels is a temporary program to help patients fill a gap until a more permanent solution to their needs is found. Anyone struggling to buy their medication for themselves or their children can stop by the pharmacy to receive assistance. This program is for a limited 1 to 3 month supply of essential medications listed in our RxAngels’ Available Medication List. RxAngels can be used one time per year, per patient. If a patient needs prescription assistance for a longer duration than what RxAngels offers, Ozanam Charitable Pharmacy may be your long-term solution. Ozanam Charitable Pharmacy is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization that provides long term prescription assistance to those who qualify. Ozanam serves Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, and Escambia Counties in South Alabama.

RxAngels is a first of its kind pharmacy program that allows someone with the means to “pay it forward” for those in our community who cannot afford their essential monthly medications.

Anyone can become a RxAngel by purchasing $5 or $10 prescription vouchers. These vouchers can be bought in two ways: stopping by our pharmacy to purchase them directly or calling us to give us the information over the phone. Learn more about how to become a RxAngel on our website.

Final Thoughts
We live in an era where most life-saving medications can be affordable if priced with the patient’s needs in mind. The price of a medication should not be calculated on the necessity of treatment. It’s time to change the way medication is sold. Together we can lower the cost of medicine.

~Jeffrey
Jeffrey O. Hoover is the Founder and Owner of Pure Life Pharmacy. Learn more about Jeffrey.