"Help is Here Express" offering prescription drug assistance

A bus rolling across the state this week is offering to sign up Iowans for help paying for their prescription medicines. The “Help is Here Express” is funded by the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, a coalition of nonprofits. Its goal is to help low-income, un-insured Iowans find programs that’ll help pay for brand-name medicines. One participating group is the Cancer Society and from its Cedar Rapids office, Michael Murray explains the program won’t interfere with Medicare benefits people may be getting. “It’s supplemental to medicare,” Murray explains. People ask him if Medicare’s going to do a prescription plan it might conflict with this one, but he says it won’t. The “Help Is Here Express” is being called a traveling enrollment clinic, out to reach people struggling with the cost of prescriptions and help them find and sign up for all the programs that might help. Murray says Iowa’s not the first state taking part in the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. “My 91-year-old mother was one of the first people in Ohio signed up for this program,” he says. Murray says his mom paid a little over 250-dollars a month for non-covered prescription drugs but now pays $7 a month for those same prescriptions. “She was able to network into and became qualified for several of those assistance programs, even though she had supplemental health insurance.” The bus spent Tuesday in Dubuque and Waterloo, and today (Wednesday) will be in Mason City and Fort Dodge. For more information surf to www.pparxia.org.