I hate the US health insurance system. It is easily the worst in the core nation world. I have used the health insurance systems of Canada, England, France, Australia, and even Russia and all of them, including the Russian one, were easier to use than that of the US in my experience.
More than any part of the US health insurance system the prescription part of the health care system is by far the worst. Since the 2000s I have had problems with Walgreens, with CVS, and with CVS Silver Script, the corporation the New York State and Local Retirement System now farms their retiree prescription medication plan out to, and now Lincoln Pharmacy.
I used Lincoln Pharmacy for my prescription needs because it was close and because it is independent. The fact that it is independent, however, is also why it is a problem for me to use Lincoln Pharmacy. First, I had a problem with Wixela, something I was forced to take for my asthma because my prescription plan no longer covered the similar costing Advair. They did not carry it so I had to get it from the mail order service of CVS Caremark (CVS, of course, is trying to run independents out of business). Then it was Cyclobenzaprine, which I take for muscle pain. As I had turned seventy I was cut off by the prescription drug coverage company not because my doctor said I should be but because the prescription company said I should be. Lincoln only told me this fact after I walked through snow and thirty mile per hour wind to go there to pick it up. Today it was Linzess, which I take for bowel issues, that I learned I could not get. When I went up to get it today Lincoln told me they no longer had a contract with MVP, yet another health insurance company who unbeknownst to me covered this for me through my state insurance, until today, because it was not cost effective for them to do so any longer.
So where does all this bureaucratic bullshite leave old, infirm, and always weary me? Well, it leaves me to clean up yet another US health insurance mess and yet another corporate bureaucratic mess. It left me to change all my prescription information in the online account pages for all four medical groups I go to (Community Care Physicians, Albany Med, Trinity for St. Peter’s, and Albany ENT). It left me to ask Lincoln to switch all my prescriptions to yes hated CVS, the CVS in Delmar. It left me to try to get my Linzess before it runs out, a medicine which causes diarrhoea when you start it again. It left me to whinge once again, just like many other Americans with health insurance, about the royal slaginess that is the US health care system.
Up yours US health care system. You, to put it nicely, suck.
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