Free Medicine Scams
Protecting Yourself Against Medical Drug Frauds
Have you received an email, visited a website or received a phone call from a telemarketers offering to help low-income people with no health insurance obtain free prescription medications from drug companies? And they tell you that all it takes is a fee, typically about $200, to enroll? It is a scam.
While it is true that most pharmaceutical companies have limited programs to offer free or low-cost medications to the financially disadvantaged, there is never a fee to apply for the assistance.
The Federal Trade Commission filed deceptive claims charges against the website FreeMedicine.com. The Owner/operators of the site settled the matter earlier this year without admitting wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $500,000 judgment and agreed to provide clear disclosures about the website's services. They also added the line, "You can access these programs directly," in small print, to the bottom of its home page.
Resources
A drug company trade group has established a website, Helpingpatients.org, that gives free information about the programs.
And the FTC has posted an alert about the free drug scam.
And please let us know about any suspicious calls or emails you receive. We look for patterns so that we can alert the authorities and victims to new scams, before it is too late!
For a comprehensive list of national and international agencies to report scams, see this page.