Practical Matters: The FA's Prescription Copay Benefit

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

Welcome back, new faculty, to a new semester! I hope you're all having a relatively smooth introduction to the new year, too, and that your holidays were merry and peaceful.

This is the time of year when many of us try to restore order to our lives after the chaos of the holidays. We do this also because it's the beginning of tax season -- W2s are coming in, 1098s, all of those various forms and pieces of paper that we need in order to figure out how much we've paid to the government over the past year and whether or not we still owe money or whether we'll be receiving money instead.

It's always more enjoyable to be the latter, of course, and to have more cash in hand. To that end, I want to make you aware of a way to recoup some of last year's expenses via a benefit the Faculty Association provides. And since this is the season of paper-and-form gathering, it makes sense to do this alongside or maybe even before you get to doing those taxes. 

The Prescription Copay Benefit allows you to receive up to $500 back for prescription copays you shelled out for medications prescribed during the previous year (to you, and to eligible dependents). That's money worth doing some extra work for -- and really, the work is not intense.

You'll find this at fascc.org under Benefit Fund forms.

First, go to your local pharmacy and ask for printouts of all of the prescriptions you and your eligible dependents received over the past year (usually for the emergency drugs, like penicillin). Also go to the Welldyne Rx web site for any maintenance drugs you may be receiving and print out a list of your prescriptions and copays there, too.

Then add everything up. Write the amount you spent on copays on the claim form (which can be found here on the FA's web site), make sure the rest of the necessary information is filled out, and then mail your form and documentation to the address at the top of the form, which I'll repost here just so it's clear -- the Fund Office is a different location than the FA Office:

Faculty Association Suffolk Community College Benefit Fund

253 West 35th

Street – 12th Floor

New York, NY 10001-1907

Like your taxes, this form is due in April. The good news is that the deadline for your claim is April 30, well after the tax deadline. So you have some time -- but I always think it's better to get that stuff out of the way before the semester gets into full swing, don't you? One less item on your to-do list to worry about.