Ye Olde Pharmacy Days

Fifteen years ago, when my daughter was first diagnosed with diabetes, we were given a handful of paper prescriptions. I drove to the local pharmacy near our house which, conveniently, doubled as a Hallmark store. I handed over the prescriptions and went home with two kinds of insulin, including one which had been diluted to make her baby-sized doses possible. I also went home with test strips, lancets, syringes and glucagon. At regular intervals I returned to the pharmacy, paid a reasonable copay, and received more supplies. Sometimes I was also able to pick up a birthday card or a baby gift while I was there.

It sounds like a fairy tale now. The only thing I still obtain at a brick-and-mortar pharmacy is insulin, and I fear those days are numbered.

I fail to understand how the current system could possibly be more cost-effective...or better in any other way for that matter.

The layers of bureaucracy which have been added in the interests of keeping costs down can't really be doing so, can they?

Our endocrinology office now has staff members who answer the office's 'prescription hotline,' speaking, emailing and faxing all day with patients, pharmacies and insurers.

Our health insurer now pays a third party case management company to manage our prescription and durable medical equipment (pump, dexcom, etc.) supply needs. That company then contacts the people at supply distribution companies who then process our order. Both the prescription case management company and the supply shipping company call, email and snail mail us, our insurer, and the aforementioned 'prescription hotline' people regularly with questions, updates and statements.

Then FedEx, UPS or the USPS is paid to deliver our supplies. They're also paid to return wrong orders, or malfunctioning equipment.

How does any bulk purchasing discount not get balanced out by all of these additional expenses?

It's also definitely less efficient, taking days if not weeks to fill prescriptions when it used to be possible to pick it all up on the way home. Or, at worst, kill the 20 minute wait picking out a birthday card or browsing the toy department.

And the room for error has increased exponentially. When I pick up a prescription from CVS, I peek in the bag before I walk away from the counter. If there's a problem it's fixed immediately. Meanwhile, our initial order from Edgepark, containing 2 wrong items, required 3 phone calls, a 48 hour wait for a replacement items, a 2 week wait for a return label, and a trip to the post office. And I'm not sure the billing is straightened out yet.

There's so much wrong with the current healthcare marketplace that this is just the tip of the iceberg. At the same time it serves as a lens through which to view the layers of bureaucracy which are adding expense and frustration for all of the players in the healthcare system.

While it wasn't always convenient to go to the pharmacy, especially with a toddler in tow, it was most certainly better than the rigmarole we go through now.

Choosing New Health Insurance

We have spent hours this month investigating our health insurance options.

Since my husband began working at his current company 12 years ago we've had the same insurance. Until now, his company contracted with one insurance company, offering 3-4 plan levels each year. When he began employment there, we chose a plan with a lower deductible, lower coinsurance costs and a lower out-of-pocket maximum. And, of course, a higher monthly price. The per paycheck cost and copays went up a few times, but the coverage remained essentially the same. We glanced at open enrollment paperwork every year, but never considered changing.

This year the company rolled out a completely new system, with choices!!! There are now plans available from 3 different insurance companies, so that, including the various levels of coverage, there were a total of 15 options to consider. Fifteen.

The idea is that each contracted insurance company offers 3-4 levels of plans. The levels are equivalent across insurers. so, for example, the 'gold plan' from each insurance company includes a $20 primary care visit copay, 80% coverage for hospitalization, and $8 monthly copays for tier 1 medicines.

Speaking of pharmacy benefits, also new is that those will now be through the health insurer we choose. For several years now, the employer has contracted with Caremark for drug benefits instead of them coming through the health insurer. And the coverage was excellent. Now we have to factor coverage for insulin, test strips, and other family members' medicines into the health insurance choice.

Our initial instinct was to look into the plans from our current insurer. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't, right? There's a plan with coverage similar to what we have now. We double checked some things, like making sure the deductible was about the same and that the coverage for pump supplies seemed equivalent. We knew our physicians probably participated but we double checked the key ones to be sure they were in this particular plan. Things looked good.

Problem was: that particular 'gold' plan costs about $5000 more per year than one offered through a different insurance company. For a few hundred or so per year I might have stuck with my 'devil you know...' philosophy and bit the bullet. For $5000 we were back to the drawing board.

And it looks like we're rolling the dice and trying a new insurance company this year.

Our doctors all participate. We'll pay more for insulin and supplies, but not anywhere near $5000 more. Humalog is the insulin of choice, with our current Novolog not covered on any tier of the formulary.  I'm worried that I'm unfamiliar with the culture and mechanics of this company, diabetes-wise, and that there will be unpleasant surprises. There will be lots of things to try to get covered this year, with an inevitable switch away from Animas supplies and a possible switch in CGM sensors as well.

But on paper it looks reasonable enough to try in order to save thousands of dollars. I'll let you know how it goes...