Life as Crisis Management: A CVS Health Kiada Tale

I never had a single problem with my health care pharmaceutical insurance coverage during the sixteen years I worked for New York state until September of 2021, the month and the year I retired from the New York state workforce. It was then, thanks, no doubt, to a wealthfare contract New York state made with the for profit CVS Health and CVS Silver Script (a cool $140 billion plus last year), that all that changed and trouble started and it started almost immediately.

I was told by my largely useless union's health care specialist that nothing would really change when I was force switched from the prescription coverage I had been on to the new one they had "negotiated" with CVS Health and CVS Silver Script. Boy was he wrong. Within weeks if not days CVS Health forced me to accept an overpriced generic version of Advair because the doctor had not noted on the prescription form that only Advair should be prescribed, a feat that would have been impressive given that neither one of us knew that there was a generic equivalent to Advair on the market some thirty years after Advair had its coming out debutant party.

Not knowing any better given the switchover in my prescription coverage, I bought the generic Advair, took it, and immediately and had an allergic reaction to it, something I am still dealing with and have never fully recovered from. Needless to say CVS Health took no responsibility for this but then that is one of the joys of being a corporation that is a person and not a person at the same time. I didn't do it and my team of highly paid lawyers silled in delaying tactics will keep you from proving it.

This was not the end of my trials and travails with this for profit healthcare bureaucracy. Last month I was informed that CVS Health was striking the once numbered amongst the elect Advair from its holy Formulary no doubt because of money. Generics cost them less. They told me I could apply for an exception to this dogmatic rule, which I and my pulmonologist did.

When I went to get a refill of Advair from my pharmacy, however, the bill was $120 dollars for three, a bill I could not and cannot pay as I am on a $20,000 dollar a year income and have a car payment of nearly $400. So I contacted my doctor. They tried to talk reason to CVS Health but had no success. CVS sent me two letters and had a bureaucrat likely from their PRor Propaganda Ministry call to explain the situation to me, a flunky who did not even know that I and my doctor applied for an exception to the holy rule because I had an alergic reaction to the generic version of Advair and could not take it.

My solution--one I was forced into--was to opt for a similar drug, Wixela. So the doctor wrote me a prescription for it and sent it to Lincoln Pharmacy. They called me to say they had to order it and then, an hour or so later, to say they could not get it from their distributor. Not surprisingly I was forced to put in a prescription for it to CVS Health's CVS Caremark Pharmacy. Needless to say, I was shocked, shocked. 

So that is where we stand at the moment. Let me simply note, in conclusion, that the US health care system with its millions uncovered, undercovered, and manipulatedly covered by Mr. Potter like for profit health care companies is the worst in the "civilised" core nation world, a fact pointed up not only by the fact that the US has millions uncovered or underovered while corporations doing the same things--a little thing called unnecessary redundancy--make millions for their morally bankrupt shareholders and corporate elites but also by the fact that the US numbers among the leaders in infant deaths and mothers dying during childbirth. Now that is something to be proud of. 

Let us now pledge allegiance to American exceptionalism...