Humira and Medicare

My wife has been on Humira for about 15 years. For her, it has made the difference between constant debilitating pain and a normal life. Prior to transitioning to Medicare, she benefited from Abbvie's copayment assistance program, which covered all of her copayment except $5 per month. When she transitioned to Medicare this month, we learned that her annual out of pocket expenses for Humira will approach $7,000. Humira is covered by Medicare (it's a Tier 5 specialty medication), but it is so incredibly expensive that our share, which is something like 25%, puts us into "catastrophic" coverage after 3 months! According to Abbvie, this is because federal law prohibits them from extending copayment assistance to patients on Medicare or Medicaid. Why in the world would there be a federal law that penalizes seniors so severely? We don't qualify for low-income assistance. There don't appear to be any really viable alternative treatments that are more reasonable. Methotrexate is just too scary. We have reached out to our senators and congressman, as well as AARP trying to bring this to the attention of people who could possibly influence the law...crickets from the lawmakers. AARP sent a standard canned response about their heroic efforts to address drug costs for seniors. Bringing this to this forum to see if there are others out there (I know there are) who would be willing to come together to make some noise with the lawmakers.

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