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Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

Prescription drug bus to roll into midstate

When an orange-and-white tour bus will roll into Macon next week, a sentence posted on its side in bold letters will no doubt catch more than a few glances.

“Need help paying for medicine?” the words say, leading a reader’s eye to a giant pill bottle labeled “Help Is Here.”

The bus, touring as part of a national campaign called the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, will visit the Macon Volunteer Clinic on Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

The aim is to help lower-income people and the uninsured find out if they qualify for free medicine. Staffers on board will use computers and cell phones to find out whether those who show up are eligible. Visitors need to know which medicines they take when they go.

Valerie Biskey, the clinic’s executive director, said that 250 or so of the 1,800 patients treated there receive free meds but that more patients need free drugs.

“We need the drug companies to cough up some more expensive medicine,” Biskey said, adding that the tour bus campaign will help get word out. “A lot of folks still don’t know that this is possible, that you can get free medicine.”

Biskey, a registered nurse, says typical clinic patients earn minimum wage and work part-time jobs. The cost of treating them doesn’t come so much in examining and diagnosing them, but rather from paying for the drugs they need.

Said Biskey: “It doesn’t do us any good to have a free clinic like we do here in Macon and then have the doctor say, ‘OK, the only way I can treat your diabetes is to use a medicine that is, say, $100 a vial.’ ... When you’re on minimum wage, the first thing you say is, ‘I’ve got to feed my family, or I need to eat or I have to put gas in my car. So guess what I’m gonna choose.’ So they’ll try to talk you out of the drug. And then you’ll say, ‘You don’t have to talk us out of it because we’re gonna get it for you free.’ ”

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.