Maybe an even better scheme, for most kinds of drugs, would be for our society to be a lot less damn fucking paranoid about the possibility that someone will acquire some drugs that he shouldn’t oughta have. Other than the some kinds of drugs that are addictive, what compelling interest does “society” have in making sure nobody gets an extra bottle of their blood pressure meds or insulin or antacids?
Gawd how I hate “ES”. Our company pushes us to use them rather than get monthly scrips at a local pharmacy, but after some terrible experiences with meds either not being sent or sent to the wrong address and being to told I had to ‘prove that’ ( how in the heck do you prove you didn’t receive something - invite them to search my home?), I have steered clear of them.
Because of my RA, I take some drugs that are high on the formulary list and I just know they would find some way to jerk me around over them and refuse to fill them.
And whilst I’m in the pit, a pox upon the government for deciding that everyone who takes a pain drug is actually a drug dealer/pusher/cheater, no matter that this individual has taken the same drug once a day for over 7 years and can’t function without it. I call foul on the whole ‘everyone who takes pain drugs get addicted to them’ thing to start with. When I first started to take a daily pain drug, I was worried about addiction and asked my doctor about it. She said that if you really need a drug and are taking the correct dose for your issues, you won’t become addicted. It’s the people who don’t need a drug or who take more of it than they need (not always their fault, sometimes drugs are way overprescribed when it comes to pain level) that addiction isn’t a problem. The body uses it for the purpose intended.
I tested that once and went a month without meds just to see what occurred. Although I had plenty of pain, I had no cravings for the pain drug. Not once. No shaky hands, cold sweats, nothing. Since then I’ve been comfortable with the drug - taking only what I need and only if I really need it. So screw the government calling me an addict and screw the horse they rode in on, just because.
I go through this crap on a regular basis with a specialty injectable I require. I have a thread in the pit about it. I’ll post a link below, but the upshot is that, due to their incompetence I’ve received, in total, 8 months worth of medicine for a one month copay. I lucked out and essentially won the lottery this time but it was only because their incompetence happened to work in my favor this time, and I first went through hell trying to get a new authorization back in January.
except that I was required to send my renewal prescription to the “local” office, the one that ships me the meds. So it IS something the customer needs to know. Remember I discovered this by sending the script to the central billing office which turned out to be a black hole full of people who didn’t give a shit.
These big pharm management companies seem to be organized with a central office in a major city and then small distribution centers (called specialty pharmacies) in many other undisclosed locations. I also have to call them every month to schedule my refill shipment and used to call the main office and they’d transfer me with the comment that it would be more efficient if I called my local distribution center directly. When you pull up their website on the page for refills it only gives the phone number for the central office.
I think they just don’t know their asses from their elbows.
Yep - the scrip is question is for an ADHD medication, which is Schedule II.
Of course, there was the time my doctor tried to electronically submit a scrip for me and was told she couldn’t because it was controlled. Yep, gotta watch out those Synthroid abusers, man…
Express Scripts was actually OK. Like another poster, my former coverage mandated that maintenance meds come from mail order - which was really more convenient when you get things set up, but still… Then they switched to CVS / Caremark which was similar but we could get the 90 day supply locally if we wanted. But that plan tended to randomly drop coverage for medications - like they wouldn’t cover my proton-pump inhibitor (Dexilant), AT ALL, now. The current coverage at least hasn’t tried THAT baloney (though one drug I take, they only cover the newer, non-generic, versus an older one that is generic).
Oh, and regarding screaming to regulatory authorities. We live in state A. The company is headquartered in state B. The insurer is in state C. The address we mail the scrips to is in state D. The recent fill was mailed from state E. I don’t know who we’d complain to :(.
State A. They can release the ban hammer of a angry Mod on all the other locations.
Just posting to express sympathy. Lucky for me, I don’t literally “feel your pain,” but I have witnessed this kind of craziness, as my mother went through all kinds of crazy issues trying to get meds - she was living in Mexico but traveled regularly to Houston for medical care, and had to get some kind of special dispensation (hmm, good if inadvertent pun there) to be issued more than the standard supply, so she could take it back to Mexico with her and have enough to last her until she came back to Houston again.
I no longer recall all the messy details as it was 3 or 4 years ago, but I know that the situation was ridiculous and caused her a lot of inconvenience and stress. I do recall driving her from pharmacy to pharmacy in Houston looking for somewhere that would help her. And I am a very nervous driver - 95% of the time I don’t drive at all, since I live in Jakarta and have a driver or take taxis - who can’t stand to drive in big unknown cities. If we’d had a car crash it would have been all the fault of the stupid drug dispensing system!
With my mail order pharmacy, if I’m even in sort of a hurry for any of my scripts (at least when it comes to refills), I’ll refill them one at a time, waiting for each to ship before ordering the next. Overall, it takes a few extra days, but I like to make sure the one I need now gets moving first. I found that if I order (say) all three now and there’s a hangup with any of them, they’ll sit on all three until they figure out the problem.
On top of that, they have some magic dollar amount (I’m guessing it’s around $100) where they won’t ship your order until they talk to you. I can place an order for a script that’s over their threshold and it’ll sit there, for days or even a week. Finally I’ll call and ask what the holdup is and they’ll say, literally nothing more than 'do you want us to charge the card ending in xxxx" and I’ll confirm it, and a tracking number will show up within a few hours. When I remember, I just call them after I place the order or order it over the phone.
I assume it’s sitting somewhere in the ‘to be called’ pile, but it seems like it can be a week+ before they actually call me.
FTR, overall I’m more or less happy with Optum, but they do some stupid stuff sometimes.
“one at a time” - I wonder if you’d experience the same slowup if you placed an order, completed it, then 10 minutes later placed an other for another one…
And dollar amount: yeah, I actually ran into that this year. I take Nuvigil (they don’t cover the generic previous-generation, Provigil, which is odd… my previous insurer was exactly the opposite). A 3-month supply of THAT is not cheap - and the order was placed at the beginning of the year, and we have a high-deductible plan, so they were worried I’d freak at being charged something like 1800 dollars or whatever it was. THAT one was shipped signature-required, as I recall.
I’m pretty sure I would. I think I’ve had things get held up, when (for example) I refill one order on Monday and before it ships I refill another one on Tuesday. The one on Tuesday has some kind of issue so they’ll hold both of them until they figure it out.
Like I said, if I really need something (which isn’t that often), I wait until it ships before I place another order. It’s just easier. Hate to find out the med I’m almost out of (or just starting or need ‘acutely’) etc is being held up because they’re temporarily out of stock on one that I have a 1000 pill stock pile of.
I was never so glad when my company got rid of ES and went to the CVS/Caremark plan (not that they have wonderful customer service at the local store, but, hey…compared to ES…).
ExpresScripts one time sent $1800 worth of one kind of insulin pens (around two years worth that expired long before I ever used very many of them) and didn’t send the other at all. :smack: Not only that, but they had an incorrect address in my file (I had updated it when my road changed to a court) and they would leave drugs in a cooler on someone else’s front porch all day. Fortunately, they (the front porch owners) knew one of the other guys in my building and tracked me down. And then the billing nightmares.
My biggest complaint with my current plan is meds getting refilled before I’m half out of anything and a couple of the pharmacy staff members.
Oh, how this thread resonates with me.
I have a huge deductible, and at the beginning of the year one of my meds costs around $1200 (Victoza) and CVS/Caremark requires a verbal ok from me to charge my card. I finally have realized that I need to pay attention to the millions of voicemails they leave me. 
My other issue is huge. Aetna insurance will absolutely not cover the correct quantity of pain meds my doctor prescribes, 90 for a one month supply. They will only cover 50 pills, and Schedule II drugs can’t be split up. PLUS - I am required to use only a handful of pharmacies, CVS and WalMart are on the list. But not Walgreen’s.
So almost exactly every 30 days (usually I have to miss work even though I get every other Friday off) I go see the doctor, get my paper presciption, go to Walgreen’s, tell them my insurance doesn’t cover the medication, and hope they have it in stock. I call around and find it eventually. But it is a royal pain in the butt to have to do this every month.
My Dad had a presciption for Norco that we didn’t get filled in the three week window. What the hell is that rule for? I was able to take off work, go to his doctor, return the unused paper prescription and get another one, but Jeez.
Some of us actually do have chronic pain, you know? We’re not drug addicts!
Right, sure you aren’t ;).
Yeah, definitely a pain. A friend of ours is on ADHD medication and she has to drive out to her doctor’s office (new doctor to her, after 18 months of unemployment and many changing insurance plans) to get the same scrip my Moon Unit needs. My daughter goes to a psychiatrist very near home - out of network, but SOOOO worth it because of the location.
Calling around reminds me of when Typo Knig had surgery - well over 25 years ago. While he was still in recovery, the doc gave me his pain scrip and I decided to try to have it filled. Called around to 3 different pharmacies before finding one that had it in stock. The person who answered the phone at one of them was horrified “THAT’S A SCHEDULE 2 DRUG!!!”. Seriously.
Were the medications not available in Mexico?
MZ, is the ADHD med Adderall? My pharmacy hasn’t refilled my order yet and it’s been 3 weeks. This happened a couple of years ago too. What happens is that more people get diagnosed for Adderall, and because it’s a controlled substance, there’s a limit to how much can be made. So, demand exceeds supply, and now my eyeballs feel like they’re about to fall out of my skull. I heard the next county over has it, but I’d have to convince my doc to write a new scrip and send it directly to a pharmacy there.
My previous company required maintenance meds to be mail ordered. Does it not occure to some companies that those medicines are important for people to have?