The burden of high drug costs weighs most heavily on the sickest Americans.
Drug makers have raised prices on treatments for life-threatening or chronic conditions like multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer. In turn, insurers have shifted more of those costs onto consumers. Saddled with high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs that expose them to a drug’s rising list price, many people are paying thousands of dollars a month merely to survive.
For more than a year, President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress have promised to take action on high drug prices, but despite a flurry of proposals, little has changed.
These are the stories of Americans living daily with the reality of high-cost drugs. And there are millions of others just like them.
With an annual income of less than $20,000, Johnson doesn’t come close to being able to afford the 12 medications her doctors have prescribed for congestive heart failure, diabetes and related complications.
She is one of the many who finds herself “in between,” as one of her doctors described it, narrowly missing the requirements for assistance but making too little to afford her prescriptions.
Here’s a rundown of the math: Johnson’s Social Security disability income of $19,560 in 2017 placed her above the cutoff for receiving additional government assistance for her prescriptions, called Extra Help, even though nearly every dollar of her income is already spoken for, from paying Medicare premiums to food and other household expenses.