Money from state consumer-fraud settlements with two pharmacy companies will give uninsured Tucsonans more than $200,000 for prescription medications.
State Attorney General Terry Goddard will be at El Rio Community Health Center in Tucson today to announce the grant, which, statewide, amounts to a total of $850,000 to 14 community health centers and programs.
El Rio received the largest amount of any clinic in Arizona — $180,970 — based on its high patient volume, which included more than 75,000 patients last year. Nearly one-third of its patients have no health insurance and that number is expected to grow in the recessed economy, El Rio's executive director Kathy Byrne said Thursday.
Arizona has the third-highest rate of uninsured people in the nation, she noted. The funds will be used to give patients their medicine at either no cost or a low cost.
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"The timing is unfortunately right . . . and it may get worse," Byrne said. "This funding will help people with no other way to pay, the truly uninsured." She said these may include the working poor, people on fixed incomes who cannot afford their prescriptions, and those with youngsters waiting to become eligible for KidsCare, the state's health insurance for children.
"We see this almost as bridge funding in many cases until folks can get on some long-term assistance. And there will be some people for whom this will be the only option," Byrne said.
The other Tucson community clinic receiving funding is Marana Healthcare Center, which will get $61,970. Mariposa Community Health Center in Nogales will receive $70,508.
The so-called "notch" group of uninsured includes low-income people who earn too much to be eligible for state assistance through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), the state's form of Medicaid. The notch group also includes an increasing number of people recently laid off from their jobs who have too many assets to qualify for AHCCCS, El Rio officials said.
Asthma medication was the reason that Roseanna Molina applied for some of the attorney general's prescription money through El Rio. Molina, 37, a stay-at-home mother, needed it for her 11-year-old daughter Sydnee. Molina's husband is self-employed and earns too much to qualify for AHCCCS, but the family is hard-pressed to pay for Sydnee's Singulair and inhalers. Molina recently quit her job to take care of their youngest child, who has heart trouble.
"My husband is a truck driver and we're barely making it," Molina said.
Tucsonan Sandra Ruiz was one of the first people to sign up for the prescription help at El Rio Thursday. The 42-year-old stay-at-home mom has gone for seven months without the Singulair she, too, requires for asthma, plus the Flonase and eyedrops she uses to control her allergies. With no health insurance, the cost would have been more than $100 per month — far more than her family could afford, she said in Spanish.
Her husband works in construction and makes too much to qualify the family for AHCCCS but not enough to make health care affordable, she said. He recently returned to work after being laid off for a month last year.
Byrne said many people affected by layoffs say they cannot afford to pay for health insurance through the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), which extends health insurance coverage from former employers for 18 months.
In most cases, COBRA costs just as much as the company's subsidized insurance plan except that the individual pays the entire premium without the company's help.
"It has turned out fortuitously to have this bit of assistance at a time when the need is clearly growing," said Goddard, adding, "I just wish that we had more money to distribute for this purpose because so many more people are joining the ranks of the uninsured."
The grant money comes from settlements with two major pharmacy benefits managers, Express Scripts and Caremark, in cases handled by Tucson-based Assistant Attorney General Noreen Matts.
Goddard said the companies engaged in deceptive business practices by switching patients from one drug to the other without consent of the patient, and without passing the savings to the patient. More than 1,000 Arizonans were affected, his office said.
DID YOU KNOW
El Rio has provided health care in Tucson since 1970, primarily to underserved populations. It has 16 Pima County locations and last year served 75,000 county patients, half of whom were enrolled in the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's program for indigent patients. Twenty-seven percent of El Rio's patients have no health insurance.
