Uncomfortable math...

The other day, I picked up a retail value of prescriptions for three months totaling: $4,005 (rounded to the nearest dollar).  Strangely, that included three generics, which I do not particularly care to take but do because of the cost.  Come August 1st, my insurance ends and the $517 I paid in co-pays will rise to that retail amount.  I simply will not be able to afford my medications.

I have been trying to find a reputable discount prescription plan, for a monthly fee would be worth it, given what I need.  But most of what I have found have been ones with complaints and poor reviews.  I checked out Wal-Marts $4 generic plan and two of my generics are not on it!  I honestly do not know what I will do.

I have tried, from time to time, skipping some of my medication, just to see what I could go without.  I was hoping, perhaps, the Singular since that is not a generic and is expensive.  But missing a single dose leads me to waking up coughing and tipping over into an asthma attack.  Since my asthma has been ever so much better here, I tried again last night.  Same results.  Lots of nebulizing needed for that bit of folly.

Celebrex is the single most expensive drug at $905, but without it I am completely non-functional with arthritic pain.  Missing a single dose of that is enough to make me have thoughts of becoming a junkie.  A second dose missed leaves me huddled on the floor.  Really nothing else helps, but I suppose I could just take a prescription level of Ibuprophen and see if that takes the edge off of the pain enough to endure it.  Naproxin, Aspirin, and Tylenol all do not touch the arthritis at all.

I was very dismayed to see that the generic of Imitrix, which is what I picked up, was only $100 less than the Celebrex.  How can I keep taking the migraine medicine at that cost?  Of course, if I still have migraines by August, I might just have thrown myself off a bridge somewhere and all of this would be moot thinking.

The Theohphylline is $485.  Surely I cannot go back to fainting all the time.  Though...perhaps I could since fainting does not hurt, per se, except for when I hit my head or something else.  I have this at the top of my list of what I might possibly skip.

The other wildly expensive--in my opinion--generic is Acarbose.  It is $492.  However, unregulated blood sugar is probably not an option.  I wonder if I ate only protein, avoided every sugar and carbohydrate known to man, if I could go without this prescription.  Of course, we know how much will power I have.  Would I ever be able to manage that?

Probably the most likely candidate to skip is the Lipitor, which just had its patent end.  However, that generic was $433.  In my opinion, that really is not so much savings there for taking a generic.  This I take actually for MS, but I have terribly low good cholesterol, so its benefits are multiplied in me. And I do come from a generational history of heart disease.

I know that I have seven more months before this is a problem, but it is one I have struggled not to worry about since I first lost my job and the COBRA clock started ticking.  It is one thing to just eschew doctor's appointments and try to avoid as much medical care as possible.  It is a completely different thing to not take the medications that make my life as endurable as it is.

Yes, in the middle of last night, while nebulizing, I sat in front of the computer and looked at the math.  No matter how I try to make it work out, it does not.  Even if I went back to fainting and gave up the Lipitor as well, I still cannot afford the over $3,000 left.

Is it not insane that only one of my medications is less than a month's mortgage payment?  Or put it this way, I could pay my mortgage for ten months for the retail cost of prescriptions I carried home this week.

It is not that I do not believe that God cares for me, but I cannot see this kind of money coming my way...$16,000 or so a year for prescriptions alone dropping in my lap.  Having worked my whole life--apart from those periods of unemployment--and having had health insurance my entire existence, I cannot fathom the life I will be beginning come August.  [It is hard enough to swallow the end of unemployment without a single nibble to any of the resumes I sent out in the hope there could be a job for me.]  And I cannot see a way out of this mess.

I truly would have no real quality of life without the prescriptions and trying to pay them will drain my very meager retirement funds, which I will be losing a significant portion to early withdrawal penalties, in just a short time.

Math was never my favorite subject.  These days I loathe it.



I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!