Pills and Insurance

Have I ever told you how much I *love* our insurance?

I went to pick up my 14 year old son's medication. Well one of 3. He had to recently see the Dr. to get the prescriptions re-written. He wasn't out of the 3rd one yet, so we didn't fill it. Then he tells me he's been out for a few days. Not only that, but he's lost the empty bottle. Oh, but I have a written prescription, yay!!!

14 year old son stays home while I go to the store. He's having a bit of a breakdown over cleaning his room. It's a bit out of whack, but oh yeah, he's not quite balanced without all his pills.

I drop off the prescription, do a little shopping while I wait. Go to pick it up. I am told I can't, because son's insurance was terminated, he's not an insured patient, etc. Um, what? I ask "Did you run it through Tricare?" (We haven't been with Tricare since 2008, but everyone seems to think we still are for some reason.) She checks... she says something again about not being covered. I ask again if she billed Tricare. It sounds like she did. So I let her know again we are NOT with Tricare, I guess she thought I said we were. Either way I tell her who we are with and she gets the same message. Not covered, coverage terminated 6/30/11.

Really? How's that? I just refilled the rest of his pills about 2 weeks ago and filled one for myself just last week. There's nothing she can do to help me, except offer to sell me the pills I need for my son at $200. No thanks. She tells me he'll have to call the insurance. I say "Yeah, he's not going to call."  She means my husband not my son. Yeah, he won't be calling either, but ok, thanks.

So I pull over, call hubby, can't reach him. So I call the lovely number on the back of my insurance card. They confirm that my son's coverage was terminated on 6/30/11. I ask "WHY"? They don't know, it doesn't show a reason. Ah, lovely! So I ask if it's just him or the whole family. She looks us up one by one and looks like we were all terminated. What the heck? She gives me another number to call. This is getting fun.

Next number I call says we are all covered. We're not showing as being terminated. They don't know what's going on. Oh yay, so I'm stuck in limbo with one person saying we're covered, another saying we're not. And yet the pharmacy is going off of the one saying we're not. I'm waiting to hear back what's going on so I can hopefully pick up his prescription before 9:00 PM tonight. The lady was super nice and tried to reach someone who could help me. She understood that this wasn't a pill you should just stop taking and go without. In the meantime I'm sick to my stomach. Luckily I found an extra pill for him to take to try and calm down and balance him a bit. After all that, I could use a pill.

:(