[Music plays throughout video]
Rose Brewster: This is my, um, blood pressure. OK, and this is the one that I just pulled out. Three times a day. That’s for my pain for my spine. This is my (sigh)... Oh, what is this? Then I have two inhalers. The crucial ones. There they are. That’s the name of them.
Student Pharmacist [with back to camera]: What type of prescription drug coverage do you have?
Rose Brewster: Terrible [she and student pharmacist laugh].
Gina Ko: Seniors coming into our clinic or to a clinic we are visiting, they’re usually overwhelmed. They’re usually told at a pharmacy that their medication’s not covered or they have to pay an outrageous out-of-pocket cost.
Rose Brewster: When I found out how much this was a month…
Student Pharmacist [with back to camera]: Mm-hmm.
Rose Brewster: There was no way.
Gina Ko: I’ve met people who are college graduates, really well-educated, and still fail to navigate through the system.
Rose Brewster: And then this, I mean (laughs)…
Student Pharmacist [with back to camera]: [Says something inaudible.]
Rose Brewster: …it’s just I’m on a fixed income, and, uh, it can’t be done.
Gina Ko: If they cannot pay for their medications, they’re just going to give them up.
Rose Brewster: I pick out my most important drug—which is my inhalers, which is this, which is blood pressure, cholesterol. I mean, they’re all crucial for me. And I, I throw ‘em all up in the air and catch one like I say, “Well, you’re the lucky one. I get to renew you today.”
Gina Ko: When they first come in we figure out what exactly the problem is, and then we will figure out what’s, what we’re going to do from there.
Student Pharmacist [with back to camera]: What is your health status?
Rose Brewster: I’m doing alright I guess—as long as my medication holds out.
Gina Ko: Almost 100% of the time, we can, we were able to do something for the patients we met. We have a Medicare.gov website. We can put in all their medication information. Then, we can compare different insurance plans and then figure out the cheapest for them. Either we save them money by lowering their drug costs, or we’re able to sign them up for new subsidy programs which are going to cover their current medications.
[To Rose, off screen] If this medicine is about 250 dollars, 300 dollars per month, if we can get it for free, we can probably delay your initiation of your doughnut hole by three-to-four months.
Once they find out that their medication will be covered next month or they – or good for the entire next year, they feel so much better.
Rose Brewster: I didn’t know that they would go to this extent, where they would really work for me and with me. And I feel better now than I did when I first came in here because I really wasn’t too sure about what was going to be said. And now I do, and I’m happier.
Gina Ko: It basically lessens a lot of their worries because they now feel secure that they will have access to their medications.
Rose Brewster: It’s really crucial that you know what your avenues are—that you’re not just stuck in one place because ‘you have to be there.’ You don’t ‘have to be there.’ There are resources out there, and they’re proof of it.