Reply #3: This is such a DISASTER!

[Pirate Smile]

"Furfaro, a disabled heart-transplant patient, found out that he'd hit the doughnut hole last month when he tried to fill a prescription for two immunosuppressant medications. Instead of two $25 co-pays, the pharmacist charged him $661 and $329 for the prescriptions.
"I threw a fit," he said. "What am I supposed to do? I don't have $661 in my pocket." Furfaro said he wasn't told about the doughnut hole when his Medicare HMO changed its coverage in January.

Furfaro, 47, left the pharmacy empty-handed, thinking that without his drugs he was going to die.
"I thought, `That's it. It's over.' The three years I put into the transplant, the waiting and everything. It was a waste of time because I can't get my medicine."

His father helped him purchase the cheaper drug of the two. But Furfaro has gone more than three weeks without the other drug, the one that helped him overcome severe organ rejection after the transplant in 2001. Disabled since 2001 and living off a monthly Social Security Disability Insurance payment of $1,171, he recently took a job as a security guard to earn money for his medications.

He's already feeling weaker and tired. "I lay around a lot. I don't have a lot of energy. I'm short of breath. I don't feel well at all," he said.
If his health deteriorates further, Furfaro said, he'll just get admitted to a hospital and receive his medicine that way, as Medicare will pay all bills if he's hospitalized."