Angela Ostrom on Exchanges

People living with chronic conditions like epilepsy often rely on medications to maintain their quality of life, and approximately 2/3 of the nearly 3 million Americans with epilepsy have seizure control largely due to pharmaceutical treatments.  The Affordable Care Act meant hope to those who were priced out of the market for health insurance.  This hope can be diminished by hitting consumers with high costs at the pharmacy counter.   High out-of-pocket costs may force individuals to choose between medications and other essential family costs.  Faced with challenges to living expenses, food budgets, child care, and/or other medical costs individuals and families who face steep out of pocket costs may not get a prescription filled.  Or, they may take a medication as they can afford the pills rather than how their physician directed. This is not the decision that we wanted families making at the pharmacy counter when they entered the ACA exchanges.  A failure to fill a prescription or adhere to physician directed use of a medication can result in costly health complications. This is especially true for people living with epilepsy, who rely on anti-epilepsy drugs (AEDs) -- the most common and most cost effective treatment for epilepsy, to control and/or reduce seizures. The Epilepsy Foundation strongly supported health care reform, and those reforms will largely fail or succeed as each patient steps up to the counter at their local pharmacy and expects to come home with ...
Source: PHRMA - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news