My insurance “encourages” the use of a mail-in pharmacy for maintenance meds - 90 day supply. Not all meds are for maintenance purposes, such as an antibiotic, but my Dr. might list a refill. For convenience, I sometimes use the local pharmacy for maintenance and non-maintenance drugs. This pharmacy automatically refills ALL Rx that have refills - and if I turn off that function for auto refills, no Rx refills. I really like this pharmacy because it’s open almost 24 hours, but I’m angry about this all or nothing auto refill and I get notices left and right about filled Rx. I get that most people forget to refill until last minute (like me), but I want it on my terms. It seems sneaky and a way to generate income from me and insurance.
When you say “mail-in pharmacy,” surely you don’t have to use mail to order your prescriptions? You order them online, and they are mailed to you, right?
It’s not clear why you don’t want to use the “mail-in” pharmacy instead of your local one. Isn’t a 90-day supply of maintenance meds more convenient? But if you really don’t want to, find another local pharmacy that has policies and procedures you like.
The only way your pharmacy’s policy makes them extra money is if a) you order the meds as early as they want you to, and b) if your doctor changes a prescription or takes you off of it right after an early refill. Then the pharmacy is ahead whatever profit they are making on the last refill. Not a huge money-maker for most maintenance meds, I think.
Most drugs aren’t a huge money-maker for pharmacies. But the OP did write that they were complaining about the treatment of non-maintenance med’s, so the question of how much the pharmacy makes on maintenance meds is moot.
I don’t think that’s entirely clear from the OP, but I can see how a person might come to that conclusion. Perhaps they were just venting anyway.
I get my from the local CVS, who gives me 90 days and also mails them to me for free after Covid.
But they are pushy about automatic refills, though you can refuse them.
I use them because they are cheaper than mail order and in a pinch I can go and get the stuff. But since I’m at zero copay for my maintenance medicine, I have a good supply stocked up.
This I don’t understand. Do they refuse to refill a prescription if you have automatic refills turned off?
Automatic refills are an incredible waste, both of drugs, and of pharmacy staff’s time and other resources.
I wonder if this thread should be in the Pit? Because I have some Pit-worthy venting to do on tangentially-related topics.
I belong to a large well-known HMO that has its own pharmacies, including mail-order. They want first-time prescriptions to happen at one of their in-person pharmacies. For refills, they strongly encourage mail-order, which can be ordered through their on-line site or via an automated phone system.
For long-term maintenance meds, the offer a strong carrot to encourage using the mail-order refills: For refills of 90 days, they give 90 days for two-months copay. Turns out that most maintenance meds have $0 copay anyway, but I save a little bit of money on some of them. That’s the good news.
Now, the fuck-ups:
From time to time, their medical management team will change one of my Rx’s to a different cheaper drug, without consulting either me or (apparently) my PCP. This has happened twice (once with a blood-pressure drug and once with an asthma inhaler) and both times they put me on drugs that I couldn’t use – and that I knew wouldn’t work for me. But nobody checked with me first. Both times I had to get my PCP to re-write the original Rx, and IIRC one of those times cost me about $60 for a 90-day supply that I couldn’t use.
Then there was the time I was using a different inhaler that worked better than any others I’ve tried but cost something like $500 for 90-days of which I had to pay about $60. Then, without notice, they jacked up the price to something like $1500 which put me into the donut hole and when I refilled, Surprise Surprise, my copay was $600.
That one, I should have grievanced but I stupidly didn’t.
For a one-off prescription, it’s usual to use a local pharmacy vs a mail-order one, as often it’s something you need right away (e.g. the antibiotics) versus a maintenance med. Why would you use mail-order in that scenario??
As far as automatic refills with the local pharmacy, that’s something I haven’t run into before (at least, not as the default). For mail-order maintenance meds, yes - though I personally like to manually order them, as I can get them slightly sooner (and thus have a bigger emergency inventory).
With the local fills: Do they actually charge you if you don’t pick them up? I’ve run into times where I had a refill and kept forgetting to pick it up, and it just got cancelled after a week or two.
It seems like most insurance plans now require you to go through mail-order for maintenance meds these days. Back when I had a policy that used CareFirst (I think that was it), I could get the 90 day supply locally at CVS and I miss that - lots faster than waiting for Dropped-Em to mail it (assuming they haven’t botched it).
Something is amiss here. Every pharmacy I’ve used, and they’ve all been national chains, has allowed me to select which prescriptions are on auto-refill. If your pharmacy is a a national chain, call their 800 number and ask for tech support. If it’s an independent pharmacy, speak to the pharmacist.
Mine are all 90-day, but not via mail. I pick them up at the pharmacy when ready.
I’ve had hard copy Rx that I can send off to express Scripts for mail order (mail in is the wrong word) but a Dr. can send it electronically to wherever I request. Benefit of mail order is that a co-pay is less expensive for 90 day supply than local pharmacy. I use CVS because it is convenient. I literally got a text yesterday that 3 Rx were refilled, which I didn’t order any of them. I got a text today where CVS asked if they should contact my Dr. for a refill, and an automated call today from CVS that a different prescription was filled.
I don’t get charged until I pick up the Rx. if I originally start at the local pharmacy for a 90 day supply and it has refills, CVS automatically refills. In the meantime, I have a Dr. who always writes new scripts for maintenance meds and it goes directly to ES. Because CVS has filled it, I can’t get it through mail order until CVS returns it to their inventory.
I’m venting but I feel harassed by CVS. I haven’t shopped for co-pays at other pharmacies, like Walgreens or Walmart.
Ive selected which Rx I want auto refills and what I don’t BUT, if I submit a new Rx with a refill, my previous selections are overridden. Don’t want to sound like a drug seeker so to clarify I have 5 maintenance Rx that are just ordinary meds. I get inhalers/sprays for seasonal allergies so I don’t need them every 30 days.
The hazard of course is when medications sound the same. Pharmacy auto refilled my husbands blood pressure meds (that weren’t working well). He got a new medication, which sounds the same. When we got home we were thoroughly confused.
That’s definitely a tech issue. Ask at the pharmacy. They can tell you how to get tech help.
Medication names can be confusing, especially when they sound similar. Pharmacists are great at clarification. Every time I’m on a new medication, the pharmacy requires I speak with the pharmacist, even if I don’t think I need to. Hopefully your pharmacy does this, too.
CVS keeps putting me on auto-refill even though I’ve repeatedly said I don’t want them to do that. It’s pretty obnoxious.
This weekend, I called in to get my normal refill - which I have asked repeatedly not to be automatic.
I after navigating the menu, I entered the prescription number and was told “no available refills.” Seeing that there was one on the bottle, I worked through the menu again to get an actual pharmacist. After 25 minutes on hold, I was told, “yes, we already filled it, so you actually don’t have any refills left.”
But they had already told me that other script I ordered in that session was waiting - so they knew they had auto-refilled it (despite my requests not to), and were able to tell me that. Why they couldn’t do the same for the other one is beyond me, it’s just poor system design.
While I’m ranting, EVERY time it asks me to enter my DOB to “help with my transaction”, and then says “Hmm…(literally, it says hmm) I don’t have that one on file.” But not having it makes zero difference and of course the first thing they ask is for my DOB, which of course they have. But you cannot get around this prompt.
CVS’ phone system is horrible, but they do give good service in the store, and among retailers we use, they actually seem to know the family, which is nice.
They were doing that 25-plus years ago when I worked at a mail-order facility. We weren’t exactly crazy about it either.
Very few independent, or even small-chain, pharmacies use auto-fill.
Right. Since LilXMo was having issues with auto refills, I assume their pharmacy has it.
When my pharmacy bought my insurance company, and then switched me to another insurance company with worse benefits, I came to pick up my refill and discovered what used to cost $30 now cost $150. I refused to get it, and eventually got my doctor to switch me to something cheaper that still worked. Never got charged.
That this was going to happen was in the documentation they sent - on page 27 in box 3 of a table.
They say a refill is ready, but they kind of ask and I have refused refills when I had way too much of the drug, or when it was a one time thing. And when I do agree, then I go to the payment page, so I suspect you won’t have to pay until you pick up the order.
For you, maybe. I love that I don’t have to think about it. Walgreen’s Mail Order takes care of all of that. If I don’t have refills they contact my provider. I just have to keep my payment method on file with them and my meds come to me automagically.