John,
We (unfortunately) have a fair amount of experience with these programs, often for our inflammatory bowel disease and hepatitis C patients, as well as some run-of-the-mill proton pump inhibitor users. Just as you might expect, some companies make the process pretty easy and some make it such a pain that we never want to do it again. The Colcrys one is not bad. In general, if the patient has $0 income and can check the box "My income is 0 so I can't prove my income", then things move pretty fast.
Believe me, I am no apologist for Big Pharma.
