‘Help Is Here Express’ rolls into Benton County
Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008
BENTONVILLE - For some Benton County residents, buying prescription drugs they need is becoming a major challenge, and as the everyday cost of living begins to soar, many are forced to make the difficult decision between buying prescription medications or food.
Karen Murphy of Pea Ridge has been making those decisions ever since she and her husband became disabled and unable to work. Between the two of them, the Murphys need to take 50 pills a day just to sustain their health, with a monthly cost for the prescription drugs between $ 2, 200 and $ 2, 300 - all of which comes out of their meager $ 2, 400-permonth income from disability.
"I am having to sell all of my property just to get money to pay for our medication," Murphy said. "You cannot buy food; you cannot buy clothing; you cannot buy the necessities for having to buy the drugs."
Chad Walters of Bentonville is also feeling the crunch of prescription drugs on his wallet ever since having a tumor removed from his small intestine in November 2007.
When Walters became sick, he lost his job as a landscape architect and has been struggling to make ends meet ever since.
"It is kind of a Catch-22. You cannot go to work because you are sick, and you need the medicine to get better, but you cannot work to pay for the medicine," Walters said. "I went from living pretty good to being a complete mess. I went through all of my savings, and now there is nothing."
The medicine Walters needs costs $ 140 per month, but without work or health insurance, he is unable to afford the medications, so he has stopped taking them against the advice of his doctors, who have told him that without the medicine, Walters simply will not recover from the tumor they removed eight months ago.
Looking for a sign of hope, Walters and the Murphys visited the "Help Is Here Express"bus when it visited the Bentonville Church of Christ on Tuesday.
The "Help Is Here Express"bus, a partnership between many leading pharmaceutical research companies, began its tour of the nation with a simple mission - to help patients access drug-assistance programs more effectively.
"What a patient can do is come on the bus, take five or 10 minutes and find out what programs they qualify for," said Greg Lopes, a spokesman for Partnership for Prescription Assistance.
Designed for people who are either uninsured or are struggling under the weight of the costs of their prescription drugs, the "Help Is Here Express"bus provides those who qualify with information on how to get their medications either free or nearly free.
The bus has been successful in its three-year tour of American cities. More than 5 million people have received help with prescription-medication costs.
"I am glad there is somebody out there to help," Walters said. "They (PPA and the sponsors of the bus ) are definitely doing a good service."
"I am hoping that we can get a reduced amount (on prescriptions ) so we can handle the cost of the medication and so we can survive," Karen Murphy said as she leafed through the packet of information on the prescription-assistance programs for which she and her husband qualify.
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