Life as Crisis Management: The CVS Health Silver Script Kiada Yet Again...

 

I am sick and tired of dealing again and again with American prescription insurance corporations. This time the problem, this time my latest life crisis, involves the muscle reliever Cyclobenzaprine and the prescription company I that covers my prescriptions, CVS Health Silver Script, the prescription corporation the New York State and Local Retirement System farms out their prescription contract for their retirees to. It sucks.

I have been taking Cyclobenzaprine for probably ten years or so now. My GP’s and my back doctors prescribed it and prescribe it for me. Today, however, I was unable to get my 30 pills of Cyclobenzaprine for this month because I turned 70 and the bureaucrats at CVS now need to approve it because I might apparently injure myself while taking it. Apparently 70 is, or the prescription insurance thinks it is, a magical boundary I have recently crossed that might now send me collapsing to the ground because of drowsiness and dizziness caused by Cyclobenzaprine.

Do the bureaucrats at CVS know anything about my case? No. Do they have all of my medical records that might indicate any history of dizziness throughout my life or any dizziness caused by Cyclobenzaprine? No. Have they contacted the prescribing doctor or doctors? I highly doubt it. Have they made my life and my health much more difficult? Absolutely. Ain’t that wonderful? NO. It isn’t a joy for an asthmatic, arthritic, elderly person to walk up to get medicines in 20 degree weather that he can’t get unbeknownst to himself.

Whether I should and can take Cyclobenzaprine should be between me and my doctor not me and the insurance company. My doctor knows me. She knows the specifics of my case. She knows whether I can safely take Cyclobenzaprine or not. The prescription health insurance company does not. 

Modern bureaucracies, of course, are a pain in the arse and perhaps no bureaucracy, one geared to making profits, is more a pain in the arse than health insurance companies as recent events show (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). These paternalistic bureaucracies should not be deciding what I can and cannot take. My doctor, who I see regularly should. But then the US health insurance system is the worst in the core nation world and I know because I have availed myself and experienced first hand and in reality what health care systems in Canada, England, France, and even Russia were like. They were all, in my humble opinion, far superior to the crazy, idiotic, and moronic one in the US.

Up CVS.