The CVS Kiada Rolls Ever Onward and Downward

 

The problems associated with health care bureaucracies in the United States never end as I well know. I experienced them again today. I am sure I will experience more of them in the near and distant future until I die.

As I noted earlier in this blog, I was prohibited from getting Cyclobenzaprine by my prescription insurance company, Silver Script, a sub-bureaucracy of CVS Health, a sub-bureaucratic unit of CVS, which covers retirees of New York State, of which I am one. They ordered a cease and desist on my use of Cyclo not for medical reasons and not because my doctor advised it but because I had turned seventy. 

In the meantime, I tried to other drugs neither of which worked. So, when I went for the first time to my Pain Management doctor, who diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia (the second time I had been diagnosed with it), for which he prescribed Lyrica, I asked him to restart my Cyclobenzaprine as well, which he did. It is the only thing I have found that helps my muscles relax and helps me sleep.

I went to my CVS pharmacy, a sub-bureaucracy of the same company that covers me for prescriptions, something which I assumed would make all this easier—It hasn’t it is even more difficult. They filled my Cyclobenzaprine prescription—so much for the ban. It cost me thirty cents for ten pills. I assumed my prescription insurance, CVS Silver Script, covered it. But no. When I went to get a refill for Cyclo today I was charged $17 dollars plus for ten pills. Boom! Sis! Bah! Bam! Now I know that the difference in price was because CVS Delmar used a discount card which covered the nearly $17 dollar difference. 

So, I called my doctor on the advice of CVS Delmar. I asked the doctor to do what CVS Delmar advised, namely put in for a price override on the drug as I did not and really cannot pay the significant price difference. My doctor’s nurse, when she returned my call, said that CVS Silver Script was not allowing her to do this. 

So—the carousel goes round and round—I called Silver Script. I also needed to call good old Silver Script because the form it promised me so I could fill it out a form for a refund for monies I should not have been charged for for Lyrica had not come yet though I requested it ten or eleven days ago had not yet arrived. Two birds. One stone. Fingers crossed.

Well my fingers are still crossed and will be crossed, I am sure, for some time. I was promised another refund form and I was told the proper bureaucratic paper work would be sent to my doctor and then a decision would be made regarding my Cyclo. 

Now I wait and wait knowing that more bureaucratic bs will come again to a Ron near you soon. Probably next week in fact. And so it goes.