Community Chat

[sunshine45]

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@newjersey wrote:

Talked to my doctor and she is putting me on a 150 mg. once a day dosage of the medicine I talked about instead of 75 mg. twice a day.   She told me my insurance will pay for it.   

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glad to hear it was taken care of pretty quickly and easily.

[withaK]

Is it possible the dosage was changed so rather than take two pills, only one is ncessary for your proper dosage ?

[Allegheny]

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@newjersey wrote:

Talked to my doctor and she is putting me on a 150 mg. once a day dosage of the medicine I talked about instead of 75 mg. twice a day.   She told me my insurance will pay for it.   

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@newjersey  

OK, so the insurance company wants you to take 1-150mg pill daily instead of 2-75mg BID.   Is that the reason why they didn't fill the original prescription?

There was a similar issue with one of my uncle's prescriptions last fall.

When one medication (cardio related) came up for refill, CVS contacted his physician requesting a once daily dose of 50mg instead of 25mg (BID) twice daily.   Well my uncle has moderate short term dementia.  CVS did send him a notice about taking one pill instead of two.  He read it I'm sure, but it didn't compute in his brain.  He kept taking the medication the way he always did, two daily, so he was overdosing for almost a month.

I called CVS and my uncle's physician's office and advised what had occurred. I could hear the concern and anxiety.  I asked the doctor's office to annotate my uncle's chart to never adjust my uncle's prescriptions without contacting me so I could be sure he understood.

[Snoopp]

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@Moonchilde wrote:

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@Snoopp wrote:

Someone I know had medicare supplemental insurance and CVS pharmacy told her they couldn't accept it.  She didn't want to get into a battle with them so she went to another drugstore and had no problem.  Sketchy.

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Medicare supplement insurance, as Part B medicare is referred to, does not cover prescription drugs.  Either you or she may be confused about that.

Medicare prescription insurance (Part D) is separate from any other Medicare supplement, and covers only prescriptions. And yes, it's entirely possible that any given pharmacy, CVS or not, won't accept every single Part D company out there.

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I don't know exactly what the policy was - maybe it was a secondary insurance.  But every other pharmacy she used prior or since accepted this very same insurance.  The only pharmacy that wouldn't take it was CVS.    She will never use CVS again.  I don't know whether it was a pharmacy error or policy issue but I won't get my prescriptions filled there either if I can help it.

[makeup addict]

I'm not on Medicare, but three years ago, my insurance would only pay for a lower dosage of one of my fibro meds.  I was taking 90mg and the insurance would only pay for 60. It was the beginning of the new year and I had to wait for over an hour to speak to someone about it. The doctor sent my records to the medical director of the insurance company.  Medical director denied the higher dosage. I started googling my med. turns out the recommended dosage was 60 mg. That is what the insurance was going by. I had been at the higher dosage for years, but I was forced to go down to the 60mg.  After a week, I couldn't tell the difference at the lower dosage. This drug caused me to have elevated liver enzymes.  At the lower dosage, normal levels.in my case, it worked out for the best at the lower dose. That doctor is nolonger at that practice. 

[AuntMame]

I had cataract surgery a few years ago and my insurance company didn't want to pay for all the eye drops you need to take before and after surgery. You know how you get these teensy-tiny bottles of drops and each bottle is $300? My doctor had prescribed an extra week of eye drops beyond the standard regimen and the insurance company said no--but not until I had used up the bottle on the first eye, and, unbeknownst to most of us, the pharmacy had filled the prescription with a much smaller bottle than the doctor had prescribed because that's what the insurance company had specified. There was a lot of frantic back and forth calls between the pharmacy (Walgreen's), me, the insurance company, the insurance company's "pharmaceutical management subcontractor," and the doctor's office. I will say that the Walgreen's pharmacist was very helpful through all the commotion. Eventually the insurance company agreed to pay for an extra quarter-ounce of drops, but it was alarming to be reminded of how much power insurance companies now wield over our health.

[newjersey]

@withaK, I'll now be taking one 150 mg. pill a day as opposed to two 75 mg. pills.

[newjersey]

@Allegheny, yes and yes, lol.

[Allegheny]

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@newjersey wrote:

@Allegheny, yes and yes, lol.

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Thank you for coming back and answering my question.

Sometimes I am curious if the reason the insurance companies do this is because they have negotiated a better price for a particular dosage.

[Spurt]

@newjersey

This is why I am not a fan of CVS....... 

I had a strange call from CVS too....they said my prescriptions could no longer be on automatic refill---when I asked why because I had my physical and complete lab work about a month prior and doctor said she refilled my prescirptions for another year with no changes made.  I called both my insurance (they said my blood pressure meds were Tier 1 no problem with refills), then I called my doctor's office and explained what happened, she called CVS and discussed my prescriptions and said the problem had been corrected. 

I'm so glad with my new enrollment for insurance the company I work for switched to Walgreens!