awkwardly: Medication Roulette

Friday

Medication Roulette

To save money on prescription medications, our HMO offers a reduced rate if you buy a three month supply by mail. Cool. Just send the written doctor's prescription by mail, guess at how long it will take to reach them, guess at how long it will take them to process the order, and hope they can get it to you before you run out of your current prescription. Now what do I do when I run out tomorrow and the shit is still in the mail? Ask the doctor to write yet another prescription for 5 days worth to carry me through until it arrives in the mail? Or am I supposed to buy 30 days worth at the local pharmacy at full price because that is the convenient increment and the only way to get it in a timely manner?

If there are any pharmaceutical or medical "insurance" execs reading this, could you please make it less convenient/more dangerous for my health and my family's health by screwing with the logistics even more? How about if you offer even bigger savings for anyone who will take part in a drugstore scavenger hunt? You tell me it's available at one of the stores within 5 or 20 or 80 miles of my home (offer bigger savings the further we have to drive drive), but I have to drive to every one of them and ask if they have the pills for me. Or maybe a scratch-off lottery type ticket at each store reveals whether I'll get my prescription at that store or have to keep searching.

Because this is all just a matter of savings. I can afford prescriptions at the full copay price, with all the money that grows on trees in my back yard.

2 Comments:

At 10:00 AM , Anonymous said...

It's even more fun for those of us who are self-employed. I had to stop taking three types of medication when I left my insurance providing job for the ranks of pay for everything myself. The irony, my blood pressure came down after I quit that job and so didn't need the BP meds. The stress went away and so the meds I was taking to help me cope with stress weren't needed anymore. The third set were meds that were supposed help regulate the side effects of taking the stress meds and BP pills at the same time.
At 10:54 AM , Robert T. Northrup said...

Sorry, I don't mean to take it for granted, the advantage I have with an employer paying more than half of my health "insurance" premiums. But a person who's getting less screwed than others still has reason to complain about getting screwed.

I've heard a couple of interviews with David Cay Johnston, author of "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)." One of the talking points he has repeated in several different forums is "...why do we need to have health insurance? Do we have kindergarten insurance? Do we have police insurance? Do we have road insurance? This is a bizarre system that we have that is unlike that anywhere else in the world, gives us the highest costs in the world and does not make our health status better."

Good to hear things worked out for you. As it turns out, the medication arrived in the mail before I ran out this time. But it's still ridiculous that we need to jump through so many hoops to get basic necessities, not because there's someone who desperately needs to be repaid for the effort he put into making one bottle of pills, but because there's someone with enough leverage to squeeze more profits out of us.

On a related note, I tried to think of something nasty to write to the electric and gas utility that ate the last of my savings in January with a bill for $350. I made a small dig at them by writing my account number on the check as "victim number".