Prescription Fun

It was time for me to get online and order a few more refills this past weekend. Typically, this is rather painless. I have a lot of prescriptions but I now request everything online and that has made managing these prescriptions a lot easier than in the past. I still make mistakes every now and then but it is far easier to manage. 

So, I access the pharmacy website...  throw the main prescription I need into my cart...  go to my cart to pay...  and what do I see? I see this screenshot pictured here! I chuckle to myself and say, "Yeah, right..."

I instantly assumed that my insurance company changed their coverage again for this new year and this is the first time I'm requesting this particular refill this new year.  Every couple of years, my doctors need to send in waivers to get coverage for certain medications. I assumed this was the case again. 

I called my mail-order pharmacy this morning to see if I need to call my doctor or call my insurance company next. I assumed that this cost pictured above was the total uncovered cost of this drug but it turns out that this cost of $8355.90 is not the total cost of this medication with no insurance coverage (I figured they stopped covering this drug like they usually do every new year). No... this is only the difference in cost between the brand name drug and the generic drug. The total cost without insurance would be significantly higher!  

I haven't checked the total cost of this particular drug in a number of years but when I started taking this drug, the total cost was approximately $72,000 a year. The last time I checked the total cost it was in the $40,000-45,000 range

Well... needless to say... someone who is disabled and unable to work because of an illness that requires this particular drug (in addition to about ten more drugs) cannot afford a cost such as this. Yeah... $34,000 a year is a bit out of my budget and that is only one of about a dozen medications!

On the positive side, my pharmacy customer service was great this morning. In times when most customer service phone calls are frustrating, tedious and complete waste of time, this phone call was easy and even productive! I still need to have my doctor resubmit the prescription with certain coding but the customer service rep made things quite easy for me. Oh, and the cost came down to tolerable levels again! There was no way I could afford to purchase this drug at $8355.90.

Tomorrow, I head to my specialist again. I'm not sure what we are going to discuss with him since the primary concern right now is Sheila's cancer. My health can afford to take a backseat to Sheila's health for a bit longer so, personally, I see no reason to make things more difficult for us until things settle down for Sheila's cancer. We'll see if he agrees.

I haven't written about Sheila's health in quite some time and I am overdue in doing so because we're already a month into a new phase of treatment, new appointments and a new schedule of weekly hospital visits. I've simply been too exhausted to do anything with photos and writing. I've been too exhausted for anything and everything.

I'll have to write about all of Sheila's treatment very soon though.