February 2019 by Tristan H.
My girl and I are on the patient lists of more doctors than is probably normal, so we are each on a host of medications. We generally use the mail order pharmacy called Express Scripts, because we can get three month's of medication at a pop. It's cheaper. But occasionally we are prescribed something short term, and for those medications we use the pharmacy at our local D&W. We tend to shop at the grocery store anyway for certain things (coffee, deli, meats), so it's a huge convenience. The pharmacy staff are always professional and friendly. Let me use this as an opportunity to gripe about insurance companies. Your doctor can prescribe you a medication, your pharmacy can have the medication on its shelves, but unless it's okay with your insurance company, you can't get the medication. Some insurance companies even prohibit the pharmacy from accepting cash in lieu of billing the insurance (for example, if the medication is cheap enough that you figure you can pay out of pocket). So this is me saying, "Don't always blame the doctor or the pharmacy. Sometimes it's the insurance company that is the problem with prescriptions." So it's important to learn exactly what medications are covered by your health insurance policy. I was, in my previous life, on an insurance plan that divided medications into two tiers. Tier 1 wasn't covered, while Tier 2 was covered. Tier 1 medications were almost exclusively new medications with no generic equivalent. And therefore Tier 1 medications were more expensive.
