Rising Prescription Costs Squeeze Area Seniors
November 1999, Albany, NY
copyright 1999 by Bridget Kelly
The label on the prescription bottle said "Refill every 90 days".
"Ninety days ago, it cost me ten dollars," said Margaret Kelly, 86, a native of Manhattan who resides in Colonie. "Yesterday, when I went back, it cost me forty."
The cost of prescription drugs is rising across the nation, and the Capital District is no exception.
The dramatic breakthroughs in prescription drugs, with new "miracle drugs" seemingly released every few months, only compounds the problem.
The number of prescriptions filled every year rises dramatically with the price, most drastically for seniors.
Many seniors are on a prescription-intensive health care regimen. A vast percentage of senior citizens is given more than one or even two prescriptions per doctor's visit.
A congestive heart failure drug called Lanoxin rose in price from $39 for a year's supply to $74 for the same amount. Kelly takes this drug, as do many elderly people; it is the most frequently prescribed drug in that demographic.
"And the worst thing is that it's my medication," Kelly said, shaking her head. "It's not like it's some luxury I don't need that I can just do without. I could die without it."
For most of her life Kelly has been reasonably healthy. A youthful bout with scoliosis, and the fact that her husband suffered as a result of tuberculosis for his last thirty years, eventually dying from asthmatic complications in 1978, left her more health-conscious than most of her generation, raising her children on healthy diets and making them take vitamins long before it was a nationwide trend to do so.
But as she began to reach the upper decades of her expected lifespan, she began to have problems with congestive heart failure, shortness of breath, and other inexplicable pains that her doctor says "just sort of happen as you get older," she said.
" 'My shoulder hurts when I do this,' I told him," Kelly said of her doctor, raising her hand. "He says, 'Then don't do this.' " She laughed. "Well, what can you do?"
"And the longer you survive them, the more complicated all these health problems get," she said, displaying the little tupperware bowl containing her daily dosages of medication. It contained what amounted to over a dozen pills, some of which were vitamins but many of which were various prescriptions.
She was diagnosed with glaucoma in 1998. It did not respond to a number of medications or even to a certain type of surgery.
The resulting degeneration of her eyesight caused Kelly, previously a positive and upbeat person, to become clinically depressed. To help with this she was prescribed Zoloft.
"It just made me sleepy," she said. "So I stopped taking it. But it's another prescription, and all the hassle and money that goes with that."
Her insurance plan, Capital District Physician's Health Plan, recently informed her that there is a limit on how much it will pay towards prescriptions. "Five hundred dollars," she said. "Well. I'm way over that now."
Kelly is lucky in that unlike many her age, who are on fixed incomes, she does have the resources to pay for these prescriptions, and can still afford food and rent and Christmas presents for her grandchildren. She invested her retirement pension and saved her husband's life insurance money, unlike many who have outlived the money set aside for their old age.
"I think about the unlucky ones sometimes and I feel so blessed in comparison," she said. "It's a hassle but I know I don't really have to worry. Not for a little while."
She shrugged. "After all, what can you do? You get old, you accept it, what can you do? But that doesn't mean you don't want to be healthy and active as long as you can."