When Sabene Rizvi stopped recently to pick up a prescription refill for a chronic health condition, she didn’t expect to face a $40 copay.

“It was quite a shock,” she recalled. “It was a complete disaster for me. I had never had to pay for it before. I make $11 an hour, so that copay was half of my shift. I was completely blindsided.”

Rizvi, 20, grew up in Scarsdale, New York, and moved to Fort Wayne two years ago to study political science and computer science at Purdue University Fort Wayne. She said her PFW degree will cost her a third of what her brother’s same degree cost at Purdue in West Lafayette.

Rizvi said the constant shifts and changes in her Medicaid benefits – like the one that ambushed her at the pharmacy – serve only to confuse and frustrate students and other low-income

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