Copays copay relief full#
Copays copay relief professional#

Christine Verini, Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer.In 2008, in response to an overwhelming need by insured patients facing high co-pays, deductibles and coinsurance for prescribed treatments, we launched the Cancer Care Co-Payment Assistance Foundation (CCAF).ĬCAF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to removing insurance barriers by helping qualified patients afford the co-payments, coinsurance and deductibles for prescribed cancer treatments.

All Cancer Care services are provided by oncology social workers and world-leading cancer experts.

Copays copay relief professional#

Help us support Senator Swann (SB 1397) and Representative Rudder (HB 0619) in passing this bill.Cancer Care is the leading national organization dedicated to providing free, professional support services including resource navigation, counseling, support groups, educational workshops, publications and financial assistance to anyone affected by cancer. Tennessee currently has an active legislation to allow cost-sharing (co-pay) assistance to count towards a patient's deductible and out-of-pocket limit. These include Virginia, West Virginia, Arizona, Illinois, Georgia, and Puerto Rico. So far, five (5) states and one territory have passed laws prohibiting or limiting the use of accumulator adjusters for all individual and small group plans. Copayment accumulator adjusters endanger patient health and well-being. All too often, patients abandon their prescription instead or are forced to seek treatment in a higher-cost setting such as an emergency room.Įxample: If your copay card has a $5,000 limit and your deductible is $5,000, after the limit has been met using the copay card, you will still have to pay the $5,000 out of pocket, instead of the copay assistance meeting your deductible.Īll copays should count!! Protect patients from high out-of-pocket costs by requiring health plans to credit all payments made by or on behalf of patients toward patient deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. This double-dipping represents a best-case scenario: it assumes that the patient can afford to pay that cost-sharing and access their medication.

Copays copay relief full#

When an insurer applies an accumulator, the insure collects double (or more) the amount of a patient's required cost-sharing: once from the copay assistance program and then, when the assistance dollars are depleted, the full amount of the cost-sharing (again) from the patient themself. Patients exposed to sky-high, year-after-year out-of-pocket costs face threats to their financial security as well as their physical wellbeing. Both options lead to bad health outcomes and higher health care spending overall. If patients find that they can't afford to remain on their medications, then they have to weigh discontinuing treatment, or turning to emergency rooms for care. The impact of the accumulators creates significant confusion, financial risk, and barriers to care for consumers.

Plans frequently have the discretion to spring accumulators on consumers at any time and conceal their existence in plan documents that are hundreds of pages long, disguising them under confusing names like 'out-of-pocket protection programs' or 'specialty copay solutions.' Unfortunately, health insurers increasingly are refusing to credit copay assistance towards patients' deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums.Īccumulator adjusters are a new cost-containment tactic that has rapidly expanded to the point where they now appear in up to 80% of commercial health plans. Many in the bleeding disorders community rely on patient copay assistance programs to help defray the out-of-pocket cost of their prescription drugs. The copay assistance is often the only way that some can afford their life-saving medications. Patients with chronic conditions such as bleeding disorders need specialty medications to manage their disease. What is co-pay assistance? Copay assistance or copay cards is money that helps patients afford out-of-pocket costs for their medication.