How to Get Free Healthcare for a Serious Condition

If you have a medical condition, particularly a serious one and lack comprehensive health insurance and the income to pay for care there is a way to receive free healthcare services.
Although most Americans hear about new breakthroughs in medicine when new therapies are approved by the FDA many people don’t understand how that happens and how participating in research is both free and can be very beneficial.

Clinical trials are the process researchers must go through to test experimental drugs and treatments to find new ways to alleviate diseases and conditions. It is a long and rigorous process but without the trials there would be no new therapies. Clinical trials have brought countless drugs, therapies and new procedures into standard medical practice. There is not one medicine or procedure currently in use today in the United States that has not been tested, tested and retested in clinical trials. The FDA monitors each step, each phase of the process to make sure it is safe and effective. That said, a few drugs and procedures have made it to the marketplace that later proved to be dangerous and had to be taken off the market. Think Vioxx. But such occurrences are not the norm. Most drugs and procedures that reach the marketplace are safe and provide much needed relief for countless sufferers.

What many people don’t realize is that thousands of generous volunteers give their time and bodies to participate in these important research studies. Because of their charitable commitment to research, every year new drugs and procedures are approved by the FDA for everyone’s benefit.

How do the research participants benefit? First of all, as a participant, all care associated with the study is free. If that means regular lab tests or xrays, they’re free. If it means undergoing an experimental procedure, the procedure and hospital stay is free. In short, everything is free. And in some studies, a stipend is paid to the participant.

Another critical aspect of participating in a clinical trial is that volunteers get first crack at a drug or procedure before anyone else. Often years and years before. If you suffer from a disease or condition that does not offer much in the way of relief, you might want to consider enrolling in a clinical trial.

Before you do, you need to know that not everyone gets the experimental drug. The only way researchers can determine if a drug works is if some of the study participants take a placebo, which is pill that looks like the real pill, but does not contain the active ingredients being tested. Neither you nor the researchers will know if you are taking the real pill or the placebo until the end of the study. If you’ve been taking the placebo, and the data to date has shown that the real pill has been providing a benefit to those taking it, you may be offered the opportunity to take the real pill.

You may be wondering if anyone can participate in a clinical trial. Well, yes and no. Each clinical trial follows a protocol or set of rules approved by the FDA. Each trial looks for people with certain conditions. Unfortunately the trials also must limit or exclude people with certain other conditions that could impact the results. Each trial is different; each set of inclusions and exclusions is unique to that specific study.

The trial criteria is based on the type and stage of a disease, age, gender, prior treatment history, and other medical conditions. Each potential participant must qualify for the study. Some research studies seek participants with conditions researchers wish to study, and others look for healthy participants. It is important to note that the inclusion and exclusion criteria are not used to reject people personally but to identify participants who are appropriate.

Is your safety protected? Yes, most clinical research is federally regulated with built-in safeguards to protect the participants. The trial follows a carefully controlled study plan which specifies what researchers will do in the study. But remember, this is experimental which means the drug or treatment is being tested for safety and side effects so there are inherent risks in participating in a clinical trial. Only you can determine if the benefit outweighs the risk.
There are up to four different phases of clinical trials as a drug or procedure is tested before going to market. The trials at each phase assist researchers in answering different questions.

During Phase I studies, a study team gives the treatment to a small number of volunteers (20-80) and examines its action in the body, its safety and its effects at various doses. Phase 1 studies generally last only a few months.

If results show that the treatment appears safe, it will be tested in Phase II and Phase III clinical studies. These studies involve larger numbers of people over longer periods of time. Phase II studies 100-300 people while Phase III studies up to 3,000 people. In these studies, the research team wants to know whether the treatment is safe and effective and what side effects it may have.

After these phases are complete and investigators are satisfied that the treatment is safe and effective, the study team may submit its data to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval. The FDA reviews the data and decides whether to approve the drug or treatment for use in patients.

A Phase IV study is also known as a post marketing surveillance study. Phase IV studies involve the safety surveillance and continuing technical support of a drug after it receives permission to be sold. Phase IV studies may be required by regulatory authorities or may be undertaken by the sponsoring company for finding a new market for the drug or other reasons (such as determining interactions with other drugs, or on certain population groups). The safety surveillance is designed to detect any rare or long-term adverse effects over a much larger patient population and longer time period than was possible during the Phase I-III clinical studies.

One last factor to think about before volunteering for a clinical trial. Altruism. Many people participate in research in order to help themselves but others do it to help others, to help bring a much needed drug or treatment to the market.

If you think you would like to investigate participating in a clinical trial and want to find out more about it a good place to start is the federal website. This is a registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. On this website you’ll find information about a study’s goal, criteria for who may join, locations, and phone numbers of study sites. You can browse by condition or disease along with location. Chances are there is a trial posted in your area. As of mid-September there were over 61,000 trials posted with locations in 157 countries. Another site worth checking is CenterWatch.