The Los Angeles County Medical Association hosted a seminar on May 16 at its downtown headquarters publicizing three prescription assistance programs for helping the uninsured and underinsured obtain medicines at reduced prices. Pfizer supported the event through a $10,000 grant to LACMA.

The seminar featured: the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, which directs uninsured and underinsured patients to more than 475 public and private patient assistance programs; the TogetherRx Access program, a collaborative project of ten major pharmaceutical companies; and the Pfizer Helpful Answers program, which helps the uninsured get prescription Pfizer medicines. To qualify for most of these programs, patients must generally meet eligibility requirements, such as income guidelines, a U.S. home address and a lack of prescription insurance coverage.

The event kicked off with an overview of the uninsured delivered by Hector Flores, MD, who is a LACMA member, chairman of the White Memorial Medical Center Family Practice Department, and a family practitioner in Montebello. Prescription assistance programs can allow doctors to continue seeing patients who are uninsured and may otherwise be forced by circumstances to stop visiting, says Dr. Flores. "We get into situations where we have a lot of patients who lose their coverage, and then we have nothing to offer them, except maybe discounting their own fees, but here's a way for those who are chronically ill to get plugged into continuing therapy until they get their feet back on the ground and get employment-based insurance," he says. "For physicians who work in community clinics, it's a great way to meet the needs of the patients who are uninsured."

TogetherRx Access Director of Government Affairs and Community Outreach Vince Frakes spoke about the particulars of the program's forgiving membership requirements and other participation details. "The pharmaceutical companies have come together as a consortium-they're all interested in helping the uninsured," says Amy Niles, TogetherRx's chair of medical relations and advocacy. Its participating companies are: Bristol-Myers Squibb; Pfizer; Johnson & Johnson; Abbott; Takeda; TAP; GlaxoSmithKline; Sanofi-Aventis; King Pharmaceuticals; and Novartis.

Beginning in 2005, TogetherRx has signed up more than 1.5 million cardholders, with 10,000 added every week, says Niles. "On average, most of our cardholders are saving between 25 and 40 percent on more than 300 brand-name medicines, and they're saving on thousands of generic products as well," she says.

Next, Gary Pelletier, director of Pfizer Helpful Answers, detailed how his program directs patients to one of the company's seven prescription assistance initiatives. For example, Connection to Care provides free medications for about 500,000 qualifying members through doctors' offices, and Pfizer Pfriends helps needy patients save on the company's medicines at 95 percent of U.S. pharmacies. Since 2007, Helpful Answers has aided about 1.1 million people.

Sabrina Ross, a representative from the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, provided an overview of its patient-assistance matching program. Primarily a pharmaceutical company project, it also includes other organizations, such as the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association and the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. The PPA has found prescription assistance for about 5 million patients since it began in 2005, and its member programs currently offer more than 2,500 medicines according to a statement.