Category: NeedyMeds

Rural Hospital Closures: What That Means For You

Accessing essential healthcare is a challenge many low-income individuals face, especially for those living in rural areas where hospital closures have become a distressing trend. Around 200 rural hospitals have closed or cut services since 2005, as per data from the Sheps Center. Even more concerning, this trend shows no signs of slowing down.  Over 600 rural hospitals may close in the near future because they don’t make enough money to pay for the increasing cost of treating patients. The impact of these hospital closures on the communities they serve is nothing short of devastating. The repercussions of hospitals closing in […]

NeedyMeds Spotlight: Take Charge of Estate Planning with Plan for Passing On

Every year, the month of August marks an important and often overlooked event: National Write a Will Month. This month allows individuals the opportunity to shape their future and ensure their wishes are honored even after the’ve moved on. Amidst life’s busyness, however, many miss out on the chance to dive into estate planning and create wills. Interestingly, a study by Caring.com points to procrastination as the main culprit behind this inaction. Surprisingly, over 42 percent of Americans haven’t created a will, largely due to putting it off. This leaves both wills and estate planning in unfamiliar territory for many, whether […]

A Letter from NeedyMeds President, Rich Sagall, MD

  We need your help!   Ever since I started NeedyMeds 25 years ago, all the information on the website has been free. In the beginning, there were two very part-time employees — now we have a staff of thirty. When we started, we had information about only the patient assistance programs — now we have data on 40,000 programs covering nearly 15 different types of assistance. When we started, we were doing well to get 100 visitors daily to the website — now we get 10,000 to 15,000 each weekday.   In the past, we have been able to […]

All About Patient Assistance Programs

NeedyMeds was started in 1997 when a family physician and a medical social worker realized there were dozens of pharmaceutical patient assistance programs available, providing medications to those in need at low- or no-cost, but no centralized resource for the information.  We became that resource, using the relatively new (at the time) Internet as the perfect medium for the constantly changing information. Despite growing significantly since our inception, we still have an expanding database of Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs) to help those unable to cover the costs of prescriptions.   Patient assistance programs are typically funded by pharmaceutical companies to […]

How You Can Help NeedyMeds

Every day, people ask how they can help NeedyMeds. Usually they have used the website or called the helpline to find assistance with their medical costs, or maybe they used our information to lower their parent’s drug costs. Here are four things you can do to help us help you and earn our everlasting gratitude.   Spread the Word Even though 10,000 to 15,000 people visit our website every workday, more need to know about NeedyMeds. Even though our toll-free helpline helps 4,000-6,000 callers every month, we want to help more! The best recommendation we can get — the thing […]

1 2 3 11

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.