The CVS Kiada…Again

 

Bureaucratic bullshit, as anyone alive and well or unwell in the twenty-first century knows, never ends. Again and again I have had to deal with bureaucratic bs. I thought with retirement such bullshit would be reduced but no, it has actually increased.

This month the bureaucratic bullshit I have had to deal with involves CVS, again, and a prescription for Pregabalin which I take for Fibromyalgia. It is always wonderful to deal with bureaucratic bs and incompetence when one doesn’t feel well but as I said bureaucratic bullshit never ends and it seems to increase with increasing age and infirmity.

I recently picked up my second prescription for Pregabalin and got a hand out saying I could contact Medicare to see if they would cover this. So, I contacted Medicare. They told me to contract my prescription insurance plan. So, I contacted Silver Script, a division of CVS, which covers my prescriptions under the Empire Plan. I am a retired New York state employee you see. They told me Pregabalin was covered and informed me CVS Delmar, where I now get my medicines, entered the incorrect DEA number.

So, I contacted CVS Delmar. When a female, a female technician I later learned, returned my call I told her what Silver Script told me. She told me no mistake was made and hung up on me. Now that's customer service! So, I called my doctor and talked to his nurse. She told me she could not fix the mistake but would call CVS Delmar to see what she could do.

In the meantime I called CVS Delmar again. The first call back ended in failure when I answered my phone no one was on the other end. So, I called CVS again and was immediately sent to a pharmacist. He found the mistake—a mistake complicated by the fact that my doctor did not submit the prescription but someone presumably under him whose DEA number was not acceptable—and corrected it. He could only, however, correct the mistake for the second time that I picked up the prescription. I now have a refund coming for my second prescription pickup from CVS but not the first. 

So, I called Silver Script again and got information on how I can get a refund for the first prescription pickup. I have to, of course, fill out a form and attach a sales receipt which I can apparently get from CVS Delmar. Here’s hoping.

All this bureaucratic bullshit would not have occurred if the Tech at CVS Delmar had simply investigated other options or contacted my doctor. But hey, what would life be if one didn’t have to do something one should never should have had to do in the first place? 

Postscript: Well they finally—the doctor, CVS, CVS Silver Script—got it figured out. I got a refund for my second Pregabalin fill. Instead of paying $21 dollars I am paying $2. The only way I can get a refund for the first fill of the drug, however, is more complicated. Isn’t this always the case with corporate bureaucracies? I had to contact Silver Script, a CVS department in CVS Caremark, and ask for a refund form and I had to go to CVS Delmar to get a copy of my payment slip because I need to send that in with the refund form. Now all I have to do is wait for the other branch of CVS to send me the form, fill it in, send it back (ain’t it wonderful I have to pay for petrol and postage to get a refund for something I should have never been charged that much for in the first place?) and return it and, of course, wait again for the refund to come. Isn’t corporate capitalism wonderful?