Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Pharmacy Hopping!

Okay. As most of you who check out my blog on a pretty regular basis know, I have been having trouble with my insurance company & my prescriptions. I went to get a couple of other prescriptions filled today. One for my insulin and for my cholesterol medicine and I was running out of some vitamins that I also needed to pick up.
About 2 months ago I switched pharmacies because the one I was at took FOREVER to fill anything and you had to wait FOREVER to pick it up, even if they had it filled and all they had to do was hand it to you. I got sick of dealing with that and decided to switch pharmacies.
Every since I have switched pharmacies, things have been going nuts! My insurance won't pay for 3 months on the "new" strips. And today I was told that my insurance company had pulled the 3 month prescription contract with all the pharmacies and would only do 3 month supplies by mail.
I HATE mail order meds. Mostly cause I can't remember to order them on time. Call me spacey, but it's true. Not to mention I like to see who I am dealing with when it comes to my medicines. Someone who knows me cause they see me so often. And someone with whom I can talk if there is a problem with my prescriptions or I have a question.
I was highly upset and wanted to talk with my insurance company to find out what was going on. When I called them, the guy I spoke with was very nice, but didn't seem to know what I was talking about at first. I explained it to him in the exact way that it was explained to me at the pharmacy: Company X, which contracts all the prescriptions for Insurance X, was bought out by Pharmacy X (which is NOT my pharmacy!). Due to this, the only pharmacy in which you can get a 3 month prescription with Insurance X is through Pharmacy X (which isn't located withing an hour of my home).
The insurance guy started looking through whatever computer program or manual or whatever he had in front of him and then asked me what county I lived in. He then told me that Pharmacy A (my pharmacy) didn't contract with Company X and that's why I could no longer get prescriptions for 3 months from Pharmacy A. Then he told me that there were 2 pharmacies in my county in which I could get a 3 month prescription.
The first one he listed was Pharmacy B (the pharmacy I JUST SWITCHED FROM!!!!) and another, local pharmacy which I will call Pharmacy C.
On the plus side, I am going to switch my prescriptions to Pharmacy C so I can continue to get my cholesterol medicine and insulin in 3 month supplies.
On the negative side, this will be the 3rd pharmacy change for me in less than 3 months.
Sigh. Why does diabetes have to be so difficult??

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

YIKES!

All this complicated stuff is enough to drive you nuts. I'm glad you have a resolution, but what a pain!

I'm been sick of Walgreens and had good luck at Target, but it was kinda far out, so then I just did the mail order route and love it. It's great to not have to hassle!

Scott K. Johnson said...

I hate having to jump through extra hoops. Just living a day with diabetes is work enough!