Mother lost health insurance. Looking for advice on how she can navigate getting asthma meds for next few months until November

For some background-

My mother has severe asthma. When I say severe, I mean it’s bad to the point where she struggles to breathe with every day tasks and any physical labor usually brings on a coughing fit or two. She is currently taking part in a couple of asthma studies since she is such an extreme case and in one of them they are studying the correlation between asthma and patients with heart health issues. Very few steroid meds help her asthma symptoms and bring her relief and the few that she has found to work for her are of course the most expensive on the market. She also has had two heart attacks in her lifetime so she is on a some heart medications to manage that issue on top of her respiratory deficiencies.

Her doctors have worked extremely hard to ensure that she can get these few meds that work for next to nothing with her insurance policy

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, she lost her health insurance about a month ago and is coming to the end of her supply of her meds/inhalers that she needs to survive. She was able to secure a catastrophic health insurance policy for the remainder of the year until she can reapply for her usual plan in November on Healthcare Marketplace. This insurance policy however does not cover the same prescriptions that she was on before for her asthma of course and even with prescription coupons applied, the total cost for the two different inhalers that she needs equals out to over $2100. That doesn’t include the heart medications she also requires.

See also  Wife had a back procedure done and insurance told us after the fact that the surgery center was not in network.

She states she is willing to forego the heart meds for the rest of the year in order to afford the inhalers that will allow her to breathe but it saddens me to think that her only option is to take the risk of picking and choosing which medications to scrounge and save for just to stay alive.

So I come to you, Reddit, in hopes that someone may have any ideas or resources that I can research and look into to try and help her find some options for either getting her medication at a reduced price or a new route she can try for assistance regarding this matter. I am not one who is wise in the ways of the medical or health insurance world and am simply looking for any suggestions or guidance that I can give her. Thank you in advance.

If it makes any difference she is located in Illinois, she had BCBSIL insurance previously and is considering taking a trip to Mexico to take the risk of trying to find her meds down south.