Category: Healthcare Reform

Affordable Care Act, Health, Healthcare Reform, Medicaid
No Comments

Affordable Care Act Helps Americans Ages 50-64

In the past five years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there have been strong supporters and fierce opponents.  No matter what side of the ACA one falls, it’s hard to deny the positive results it has had in some people’s lives. Since 2013, uninsured rate dropped by 31% among Americans ages 50-64.   Elderly Americans are among the most underserved populations in the country, and are at risk of struggling with poverty and disparity in health care.  The ACA expanded access to health insurance coverage to 50- to 64-year-olds through several provisions, including expanding eligibility for […]

Read More
Health, Healthcare Reform, NeedyMeds, Patient Assistance, Prescription Drugs
No Comments

A Prescription for Change – Making Affordable Medicine a Priority

In a previous guest post, Alison Lawton of the Access Our Medicine Initiative wrote on the importance of affordable medications and AOM’s goal to reach 100,000 signatures for their Access Our Medicine Declaration. Having achieved their goal, they are now planning a worldwide Thunderclap of awareness.   When we launched the Access Our Medicine Initiative on World Health Day last year I didn’t know if anyone would respond.   We knew that the price of medicine was rising for life-changing medicines with devastating consequences for everyone, around the globe. We learned of people choosing between food and medicine, being pushed […]

Read More
Health, Healthcare Reform, NeedyMeds, Patient Assistance, Prescription Drugs
7 Comments

A Declaration for Affordable Medicine

Medicines can only work in patients who can take them. If we have medicines today to treat people and they can’t access them, then we have to make changes. That’s why we launched the Access Our Medicine Initiative. The Access Our Medicine Initiative launched in April 2014 inviting people to sign an online declaration with a simple statement – that everyone should have access to affordable medicine. Since then, over 75,000 people from 160 countries and a diverse range of organizations representing more than 400 million people have signed the Declaration at www.accessourmedicine.com. Why are so many people interested? Even […]

Read More
Affordable Care Act, Healthcare Reform, Medicaid, Patient Assistance
No Comments

All About Medicaid

  Here at NeedyMeds we regularly refer people to their state’s Medicaid program, and in today’s blog post we are going to explain exactly what Medicaid is and how it functions. Are you currently enrolled in Medicaid? Share your experience with us in the comments section. How is it Financed? Medicaid, sometimes called Medical Assistance, is a joint federal and state entitlement program for people with limited income that helps to pay for medical costs. It receives a combination of funding from both the state and federal government. The amount paid to each state by the federal government, also known […]

Read More
Affordable Care Act, Healthcare Reform, Patient Assistance, Prescription Drugs
No Comments

The Affordable Care Act and the Future of Assistance Programs

We’ve been getting a lot of questions from our readers about how the resources we list on our website, especially the pharmaceutical patient assistance programs, will be affected by the Affordable Care Act. While we are still far away from having all the answers, we do have some additional information we can provide you after attending a recent PAP Conference. The overarching consensus is that PAPs will continue to exist to help those in need that fall into the gaps.  Here is an overview of what we learned at the CBI PAP 2014 Conference, held in Baltimore on March 6-7. […]

Read More

About Us

Welcome to the NeedyMeds Voice! We look forward to presenting you with timely, provocative pieces on healthcare reform, patient advocacy, medication and healthcare access, and other health-related news. Our goals are to educate, enlighten, and elucidate; together, we will try to make sense of the myriad and ongoing healthcare-related changes in the U.S. today.