How on earth do people manage who do not have good health coverage that includes some help on prescriptions? Today I had to sit back and take a deep breath when I was told the prescription I wanted to have filled would cost me $801.82!!!
Okay. Let me step back a piece and give you a bit more information. The prescription was written by my doctor for a ninety day supply of two doses a day. So that's 180 doses at $4.85 a dose or $8.91 a day. That doesn't seem too terribly bad in the grand scheme of things, but a one year supply would cost me $3207.28! Ouch.
This prescription is not for some life saving drug or something that will alleviate great pain or make me a better person. This is for eye drops to solve my dry eye problem. Dry eyes. They are painful and make bright lights no fun at all but really? After the third person to whom I spoke told me that it didn't matter that I'd never had to pay that much for any drug ever and I was going to have to cough up the shekels, I told her to cancel the order.
Then I called my insurance company. She barely let me finish telling her my problem before she told me she couldn't help me. My prescription insurance is handled by the company who fills my prescriptions (to whom I had just had several conversations and who denied knowing anything about anything).
So I called the company-who-fills-my-prescriptions-and-who-handles-my-Rx-insurance-but-doesn't-know-anything-about-it. Again. Finally I got lucky and was connected a woman who had worked for the company for 25 years and didn't care if she was not supposed to stay on the phone with one customer for 2.37 minutes (yes, I made that number up, but you know what I mean). She listened to my tale, took one look at my file, told me I was being asked to pay 100% of the cost and that it was ridiculous, and said she was going to get to the bottom of the issue.
Right now my case is in the hands of the Customer Service Team, and I should have an outcome tomorrow.
What did I learn?
- just because you've never had problems with a company doesn't mean you never will
- mergers of one company with another can cause those problems
- when companies merge they merge their computer files which may create those problems
- customer service representatives are only supposed to stay on the phone with one customer for a very short time - even if they haven't solved a problem
- drugs are even more expensive than I thought possible
- silly ailments can be costly
- if you have a problem, do your due diligence
- be persistent
- don't accept "I don't know" as an answer - ask for someone who does
- keep your humor and your temper but let people know you mean business and they should, too
But can you imagine if I accepted their initial statements as accurate? So what so people do if they don't know how to advocate for themselves (and, trust me, I'm not a shining example- you should meet Esther!)? What do they do if they need a drug that they can't afford? I know there are people out there to help, but what if I didn't know how to help myself and also didn't know how to get help?
Here's my bottom line. I won't give up and I won't pay that absurd amount. There are other drugs that should take care of my problem without costing me over $3000 a year!
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