New San Jose Pharmacy Aims To Put Medication In Hands Of People Who Can't Afford It
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) -- A new type of pharmacy has opened up in San Jose that aims to provide medication to people who can't afford them.
50 million people skip their drugs each month because they can't afford them, but $5 billion worth of prescription drugs are thrown out every year.
The Better Health Pharmacy takes non-expired, still sealed bottles of pills and injections and gives them away free to anyone with a prescription. A Good Samaritan law on drugs passed in 2005, but it took this long to open the state's first free pharmacy.
"Before the laws actually mandated ta health facility with these drugs be destroyed, even if they were unopened and still good. That's ridiculous. If it was good enough to be given to a patient at a health facility, why can't it be used at a safety net facility like this one," Adam Kircher of Sirum said.
Individuals cannot donate, and the medications have to come from a nursing home or hospital where patients have changed medicines or died.
