RFK Jr.: You need meds? What’re you gay?

I had this bullshit happen in Florida at a Walgreens…I had a doctor put a prescription for me…we had worked together for a good while and finally found a script that works for me. Walgreens tells me they dont carry it, except I’ve had it filled in the past at that location.

Then this way over stepping mother fucker starts trying to diagnose me and then had the audacity to say, “have your doctor call us and we can see if we can work something out.”

Bitch what the fuck do you think the PRESCRIPTION is, that IS the communication between the pharmacy and the doctor, last time I went to Walgreens

the thing that annoys me is they don’t care that you have a chronic condition. it’s not going to change. i’m going to need this med for the rest of my life.

but they need my doctor to re-up the prescription every 6 months all the same

Pharmacist here. It’s not our fault as much as you think. Basically, the insurance companies invented something called “Pharmacy Benefits Managers” who basically act as a middleman between you and your doctor on what you can get, and how much they will reimburse the pharmacy if you do.

If your doctor says you need atorvastatin, but your PBM says they only want to pay for simvastatin, you can either get your doctor to pay for simvastatin, or pay for atorvastatin yourself with a discount card. The cost for a generic med like that is probably about your copay anyways, so no big loss to you to skip the headache.

Surprisingly, they invented fees for pharmacies! If you choose the route to get your doctor to change you to simvastatin, we get the privilege of managing that for you, and once we finally reach your doctor and make the change, they will give us maybe $10 to fill it for you! Plus you have a $10 copay, so there is some money… But of course we have to source the med. It probably costs us like $12 for this example, maybe less maybe more, depending on the manufacturer. So if we do all of this then it seems like we made $8, but SURPRISE, your PBM charged us a fee for utilizing them. It might be $6. It might be more if we don’t meet certain criteria, like percentage of diabetic patients on statins.

So okay we have our nice $2 to pay for shipping your med to the oharmacy, renting our location, and filling it (I think it’s less than half that on average, I just don’t know the actual figures) with our staff. It should come as no surprise that we have very limited options on manufacturers now.

You might say “well at least the PBM fought to make my meds cheaper in the end” but no! They now get to say to your insurance company “okay we managed getting your patient another month of lower cholesterol, please pay us $100 for our efforts”. So, indirectly, you paid an extra $100 on this whole thing through your insurance premiums. Not sure on if this part is true I just heard it as a rumor.

But wait there’s more! The insurance company actually owns the PBM all along! They paid themselves to offer themselves this service for you!

So anyways I’m getting out of retail pharmacy. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

My wife recently had an issue where it was either an anaphylactic reaction or scombroid poisoning. They treated her at urgent care and prescribed an EpiPen in case it happened again. The pharmacy comes out and says sorry it’s $120. I know my wife has very good insurance so I had to fight with them, surely there’s a generic or something? Then they look into it and say well we have a different kind of one that this prescription covers that’s $5 but it expires in September. I’m like yeah, obviously I’ll take the one that’s 24x cheaper. Like why do we have to do this whole bullshit? Why didn’t you offer that one 1st? Fuck for profit healthcare.

If you are in the US and have a Costco membership, try getting your prescriptions without entering in your insurance. They will put you in the Costco Member Prescription Program. My pills were 75% cheaper. Also this works if you don’t have insurance.

https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/
https://www.alldaychemist.com/

Some old school sites that allow ordering of certain rx medicines without an rx. You can’t order scheduled substances like opioids, but they have a lot of common prescription medications.

You forgot the pharmacist who thinks they know more than your doctor and has the gall to opine on your prescription.

Excuses are the one thing that’s always in stock. Ask your doctor if ℞_cuse is right for you.

I pick up prescriptions for people and CVS always fascinates me, they have like 6 people running around looking busy but somehow very few prescriptions are being filled.

“Maybe go fuck yourself.”

Will do, thanks!

Is this AI edited?

Find a local pharmacist if you can.

Every refill feels like a side quest with surprise fees and a boss fight at the counter.