Rejected by Roche Patient Assistance

As I mentioned in the blog on November 26th, even with insurance the copays are very expensive.  Right now we pay $345 for the Ribavirin and $605 for the Pegasys each month.  We applied for financial assistance with the co-pays a few weeks ago through Roche Patient Assistance Program, and we were just notified that we were denied.

To be completely honest, I found the entire process to be B.S.  The first time I called I gave the representative our gross household income and insurance information.  I asked what the eligibility requirements were and the representative couldn't tell me.  The rep did inform me that in a few days I would get a call from someone at Roche notifying me if we were qualified to receive an application.  About a week later, we received the call.  After verifying our insurance information, Roche determined that we were qualified to apply, and we would receive the application in a few days. We did.

The application was very basic.  It asked for our GROSS household income, insurance information and had a section for the doctor to fill out.  Basically, the doctor's portion asked what type of Hep, how many weeks of treatment, where to send the drugs and required the doctor's signature.  We were also required to send a copy of our tax return to verify our income and original prescriptions from the doctor.

So we filled out our portion, faxed it to the doctor to fill out his, and a few days later Steve picked up the application and the RX's at the doctors office.  Then we sent everything to Roche and less than a week later we received a notice that said that we were denied because our income was over the limit.

I think it is pretty rediculous that it took 3 weeks to find out that our income was too high, when I told them what our income is the very first time I spoke with them!  If the original rep would have known the eligibility requirements, obviously I wouldn't have applied, and we wouldn't have gotten our hopes up.  BAD SYSTEM- Gives you hope for no reason!