Seniors Unable To Afford Prescription Drugs, Study Finds

Even with physician assistance, the problem still remains for seniors, especially here in California where the study was conducted...25% just pitched their medications all together...so where does this leave the physician in the compliance areas for P4P? BD

Two-thirds of California seniors cannot afford their medications, and nine in 10 seniors want to be able to choose which medications are prescribed to them, according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, the Honolulu Advertiser reports. For the study, Chien-Wen Tseng, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Hawaii John Burns School of Medicine and a physician investigator at the Pacific Health Research Institute, and colleagues surveyed 1,100 California residents who were at least 65 years old.

Among participants who stopped taking drugs, 17% said that their physician had checked to see if they could afford the treatments. 25% of participants skipped, stopped or never began taking treatments because of cost;