Measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000. However, measles can still infect people when brought in from foreign visitors or unvaccinated Americans while traveling abroad. The recent outbreak at a popular vacation spot in southern California can have far-reaching effects, though these effects are easily countered with the proper medical precautions. Measles is a virus that presents with high fever, cough, runny nose, and red/watery eyes. Two to three days after initial symptoms, tiny white spots may appear inside the mouth followed by a rash covering the face, neck, body, arms, legs, and feet appearing one […]
Category: Health
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 […]
Staying Healthy This Cold and Flu Season
Children going back to school and a cold wind starting to blow are signifiers of the impending cold and flu season. This year’s may seem particularly daunting due to exotic diseases appearing in the news and the spread of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) affecting hundreds of families throughout the United States. With all of this in mind, NeedyMeds wanted to give our readers some helpful tips to keep themselves and their children healthy, along with resources available for those in need. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough and sneeze. If you don’t have a tissue, cough […]
Another Way to Save on Medication Costs
Past blogs have discussed various ways to save on medication costs – pharmaceutical patient assistance programs, drug discount coupons, drug discount card, etc. Let me tell you about another way you may be able to cut your medication costs. At NeedyMeds we receive calls from people who can’t afford their medications. Most are taking just a few drugs, but a significant number are taking 10 or more drugs – sometimes 20 or more drugs. According to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report 82% of American adults take at least one medication and 29% take five or more […]
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. […]