New Website Helps Families Lower, or Even Eliminate, Cost of Health Care Medications

OAK BLUFFS, Mass., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- For families struggling with health care costs, a new website --- FirstRxSavings.com --- has been launched to provide the information and computer-printable money-savings coupons that people can use to lower --- and in some cases totally eliminate --- the amounts they spend on prescription and over-the-counter medications.

In order to help patients lower their costs, the new website provides the most comprehensive, constantly updated collection of money-saving coupons that can be printed from any computer, for hundreds of offers available for some of the most popular and most widely used prescription medications covering a wide range of ailments. When brought to a pharmacy, together with a physician's prescription for that medication, the coupon is accepted by the pharmacist towards payment for the prescription. Often, it covers an insured patient's entire co-pay cost, making it possible for the customer to have the prescribed medication at no cost whatever. These coupons are part of pharmaceutical companies' commitments to help lower Americans' health care costs.

The website does not require visitors to register with FirstRxSavings.com in order to obtain these money-saving opportunities.

According to the Virginia-based National Patient Advocate Foundation, an organization that helps people who are struggling to pay their medical bills, 31% of the almost 45,000 people they helped last year identified drug co-payments as their top medical-debt problem. That is an increase from 26% of patients surveyed in 2006 and 17% in 2005. Many such families are still unaware of the hundreds of coupon programs sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies that enable patients to dramatically lower, or totally eliminate, the co-pay dollars usually required by health insurance companies and the pharmacies. Some of the coupons can even be used over and over again for up to 12 refills.

Non-insured patients can also take advantage of specific savings. The amount in each case depends on the individual coupon offer.

The website also provides updated information and coupons for certain over-the-counter products (for example, cold remedies) that do not require medical prescriptions. These coupons, too, can be printed from any computer and used to save money on such products.

An important additional benefit provided by FirstRxSavings.com is the information it provides about the symptoms, treatments and medication options for hundreds of ailments. A recent study unrelated to the website pointed out that such information is requested as being most helpful by 92% of the respondents--a segment of the population known as "Pre-Visit Patients" who go online to seek information after they have made doctors' appointments, but before the date they are scheduled to see their physicians. FirstRxSavings.com achieves this by linking visitors to pharmaceutical manufacturers' websites to obtain the coupons. Such websites offer the kind of substantial information respondents to that study requested.

The result is that millions of families throughout the U.S. can now use the www.FirstRxSavings.com website as the first place to turn to for ways to lower, or eliminate, their own personal health care costs --- an issue that has become a primary concern for the majority of Americans --- as well as to find the medical information they need.

SOURCE FirstRxSavings.com