Mom's Medications

One month ago, my mother Marcia went to the hospital because she was having trouble breathing. While there, she had a MASSIVE heart attack that damaged her mitrial valve. While there, her kidneys began shutting down, and her diabetes worsened to the point where she began needing insulin to manage it. She was finally discharged from the hospital after 15 days under the condition that she wears an external defibrilator vest to make sure that if her heart were to stop because of it still being so weak, that it will shock her back to life. She has to wear this vest 24 hours a day for the next 3-6 months. After 2 weeks, she was having trouble breathing again and had to re-enter the hospital for the weekend. After this stay, she ended up having 15 different prescriptions, luckily we've never had an issue with her insurance paying for her medications... that is up until this past Tuesday. At roughly 10am... Humana called to let me know they were sending her prescriptions out to her but before they could, they needed her $865 co-pay!!! I nearly spit out my oatmeal! It turns out, she has reached her "donut hole" because Right Source (Humana's in-house pharmacy) only sends out 90 day prescriptions, therefore all of her prescription funds were eaten up by her MANY prescriptions since January.  There was no notice that we were approaching this donut hole or even that this thing even existed! Had we known about it we could have been pro-active! So now she has to pay $4600 out of pocket on medicine before they will start paying again and even then they will only pay 35% with her to cover the rest until January! So here we are Tuesday morning and we have 5 days left of medications, 2 of which being Novalog and Levemir prescriptions. We have price matched these 2 items to a mere $475 for just those 2 medicines. We don't have that much; but without these 2 medicines she wont make it. We have asked doctors for samples for her other more expensive drugs. We downloaded 2 different discount cards for these insulins. Unfortunately Humana is apparently Medicare Part D though no where on Medicare nor Humana have we been able to find these words, but no Pharmacy will accept the discount cards because of this fact. We have applied to different pharmaceutical companies to try to get the meds for free or discounted but this can take up to 2 weeks and she just doesn't have 2 weeks left of medicine. We have called Georgia Cares (they don't by the way). We have looked for low cost clinics (they can't help because she HAS insurance even though Humana isn't paying because she is in the donut hole). We have called the Diabetes Association (again, can't help because she has insurance even though they aren't paying). We have spoken to a Social worker at the hospital ( they can't help because she isn't a hospital patient). We have contacted Georgia's Charitable Care Network (again, she has insurance and they can't help us). We applied for extra help through Medicare but it appears she make $55 too much to receive any extra help. We can apply for Medicare Part D that has no Donut hole, but their enrollment doesn't begin until October 15. Lincare IS willing to help out with her Pulmonary medications, but they don't deal with Diabetes. This does take some of the stress off of us, but we are still in a crunch for her Insulins. We have used GoodRx to find the cheapest, but the cheapest is still out of reach. Needymeds referred us to the patient assistance program that will take up to 2 weeks to get started. We are at a loss and we just don't know what else to do. We know everyone has a lot on their plate as well, but if you happen to have a little extra that you are willing to give, it really would mean a lot. Right now, with me on disability because of my shoulders and feet and my husband on disability from terminal Prostate Cancer, we do good to take care of the day to day expenses and gas to get everyone to their MANY doctor's appointments, we just don't have any extra.