This is interesting

Just to re-cap for my blogger friends, there is a pill that Randy will start taking that costs $70,000/year. That's just over $5800/month. Yikes. The drug is supposed to stop the blood flow to the tumors, therefor stopping it's growth, hopefully, and giving him some years to live. :) There's always a catch though. (or just more hoops to jump through rather). There is a program out there that will cover the cost of the pills called REACH. Yay! But since we have medi-cal, it is getting in the way. The lady we are dealing with is a total sweetheart and is doing everything in her power to get us accepted, but then there's our issue of our share of cost with medi-cal. It has been lowered, but still not within reach for us to afford monthly, so we're back to square one.

I called our social worker today, who was also very sweet and helpful, (thank goodness for a new referral), and asked why our share of cost is so high with neither of us working. She explained that for a family of 4, our living expenses, including rent has to be less than $1,100/month. Since the Mercy fund is set up to pay our living expenses right now, we exceed that amount, so every dollar over $1,100/month is considered our share of cost. So doing the math, even if the Mercy fund paid for the pills that Randy should be taking, in less than 2 months, the fund would be depleted and we would be out on the streets. So even though there's a program set up for people like us, to pay for life saving drugs,we are not able to access it. I will not give my opinion on the Pharmaceutical companies. I do understand that there is a lot of money that goes into research for medications, but do they really have to have us by the balls just because they can. Where's the grace come in. Oh, that's right... Let's see what God does with this!