Tag: Drugs

America’s Love Affair with the Car – and Medicines – Can Be Deadly  

First, some recent, eye-opening facts: In the US there are over 276 million registered vehicles with 222 million drivers holding a valid license. Of this number, nearly 43 million are 65 or older. That’s roughly one in every five. 40,100 people died in accidents involving motor vehicles in 2017 a 1 percent drop from the year before. Almost a third of traffic fatalities involve drivers who were impaired by drugs or alcohol, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). According to NHTSA there were 795 fatalities that were drowsy-driving-related in 2017.   Adding Medicines into the […]

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 […]

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 […]

What is a Patient Assistance Program?

More and more Americans struggle everyday with the rising cost of medications.  This can lead to families making difficult decisions, often forgoing needed meds in order to cover the cost of food, housing, or transportation.  However, there is help available.  Many pharmaceutical companies, along with some pharmacies and non-profit groups, manage Patient Assistance Programs (or PAPs) that offer the medication at reduced or no cost.  So how do these programs work?  And where can you find one?   What is a PAP? Patient Assistance Programs are programs usually designed by a pharmaceutical company to offer medications to low income or […]

Americans Still Taking Risks with Needed Medications

Plus: How to lower your drug costs Americans take a lot of medicines – and many resort to risky behaviors to afford them. That’s according to a recent national telephone poll by public-education project Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs.  Forty-four percent of Americans take an average of 4.5 prescription drugs; 16 percent say they take 7 or more. To afford those medications, more than half (57 percent) of those polled reported taking steps in the last year—some of them potentially dangerous—to curb high drug costs. That included not filling a prescription (17 percent), skipping a scheduled dose (14 percent), and […]

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.