Reprinted from the Health District's quarterly publication mailed to district residents (Fall 2002)

Lisa Fahrenbruch likes to walk five miles every morning, but last spring when her asthma took a turn for the worse, she could barely make it across her living room without huffing and puffing.

“I couldn’t breathe,” she recalls. “It was like someone had a pillow over my face.” Farhenbruch’s steadily worsening asthma also made it difficult for her to work and landed her in the hospital emergency room several times a month.

Fahrenbruch’s condition improved almost immediately. “The first day I was on it, I couldn’t believe the difference,” she says.

There was just one catch – the medicine cost almost $200 a month, financially out-of-reach for Fahrenbruch, who lost her health insurance when she was laid off last year. Although employed now, Fahrenbruch still lacks insurance.

Thanks to the Health District’s Prescription Assistance program, however, Fahrenbruch is breathing easier these days. She only pays $40 a month for medicine, instead of $200.
Prescription Assistance helps district residents without health insurance whose annual income is 185 percent or less of the federal poverty level (around $22,000 a year for a family of two). It does this through vouchers – which are combined with a small co-payment and used at local pharmacies – and by helping people apply for free or discounted medications provided by drug manufacturers.

Last year, the program helped 1,248 people, nearly all of whom would not have been able to afford their medicine any other way.

“They don’t make you feel like a loser; they make you feel like you belong,” Fahrenbruch says of the Prescription Assistance staff. “They’re happy to be helping you.”
Healthy again, Fahrenbruch now looks forward to getting a college degree and perhaps repaying the kindness of those who helped her get back on her feet.

“My community has helped me and I really want to give something back to it.”