FDA: You need meds? What’re you gay?
Honestly impressive how pharmacies are able to find a new type of problem every time I go to pick up my meds
Submitted 5 days ago by JimmyMemes@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/401a8526-c926-4d05-9d5b-8cfb08158105.png
Comments
BigBrownDog@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
he just dips in methyelene blue, suntans till his skin is more burnt than a rotisserie chicken and hopped on roids at 70. fun fact the bear incident was just 11years prior.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Nothing a few hours on a tanning bed won’t fix.
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
PrFK Jr
AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I’m currently stuck in prior authorization hell and used the last dose of my med yesterday. Ugh. I hate this fucking country.
Zorcron@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Might be a long shot, but depending on the med, might want to ask your doctor’s office if they have sample supplies of the med to hold you over until they get the prior auth approved.
AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Generally a good suggestion but having your mental health depend on a controlled substance is a fresh kind of hell. Anyone know how Spain’s health care system is for trans folks on testosterone? I can get citizenship in an EU country and a couple of people I know moved to Madrid last year and I think this situation has convinced me to move even if I’ve forgotten most of the Spanish I once knew.
I did pitch a fit and managed to get it filled today but I never want to deal with this shit again, it’s been life-alteringly awful previous times.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
medications for mental illnesses are controlled so the insurance/hmo adds extra laborious steps to get it. pre-authorization or must have in-person doctors appts,etc. its not as fast i need this cream for skin/fungal asap.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
i currently unable to get topicals for my skin condition because i have a hard time scheduling appoints since i had to use new insurance around my work schedule, which one of “problem solvers” have denied me of changing it. oh yea certain drugs like controlled substances, your insurance people adds extra step to even get it.
Kage520@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Pharmacist here. It’s not our fault as much as you think. Basically, the insurance companies invented something called “Pharmacy Benefits Managers” who basically act as a middleman between you and your doctor on what you can get, and how much they will reimburse the pharmacy if you do.
If your doctor says you need atorvastatin, but your PBM says they only want to pay for simvastatin, you can either get your doctor to pay for simvastatin, or pay for atorvastatin yourself with a discount card. The cost for a generic med like that is probably about your copay anyways, so no big loss to you to skip the headache.
Surprisingly, they invented fees for pharmacies! If you choose the route to get your doctor to change you to simvastatin, we get the privilege of managing that for you, and once we finally reach your doctor and make the change, they will give us maybe $10 to fill it for you! Plus you have a $10 copay, so there is some money… But of course we have to source the med. It probably costs us like $12 for this example, maybe less maybe more, depending on the manufacturer. So if we do all of this then it seems like we made $8, but SURPRISE, your PBM charged us a fee for utilizing them. It might be $6. It might be more if we don’t meet certain criteria, like percentage of diabetic patients on statins.
So okay we have our nice $2 to pay for shipping your med to the oharmacy, renting our location, and filling it (I think it’s less than half that on average, I just don’t know the actual figures) with our staff. It should come as no surprise that we have very limited options on manufacturers now.
You might say “well at least the PBM fought to make my meds cheaper in the end” but no! They now get to say to your insurance company “okay we managed getting your patient another month of lower cholesterol, please pay us $100 for our efforts”. So, indirectly, you paid an extra $100 on this whole thing through your insurance premiums. Not sure on if this part is true I just heard it as a rumor.
But wait there’s more! The insurance company actually owns the PBM all along! They paid themselves to offer themselves this service for you!
So anyways I’m getting out of retail pharmacy. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I didn’t need to get this upset before 8am. I don’t even take medications, but this is the exact type of nonsense that gets my blood boiling. That there’s anyone between a patient and their doctor (or perhaps a patient and a pharmacist) is just screaming for some forced changes.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 4 days ago
Anyone have that I’m too European for this image handy?
MadhuGururajan@programming.dev 4 days ago
I am too Indian for this, even though we have a strange habit of copying the shitty parts of the US and ditching the actually functioning parts.
hateisreality@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I had this bullshit happen in Florida at a Walgreens…I had a doctor put a prescription for me…we had worked together for a good while and finally found a script that works for me. Walgreens tells me they dont carry it, except I’ve had it filled in the past at that location.
Then this way over stepping mother fucker starts trying to diagnose me and then had the audacity to say, “have your doctor call us and we can see if we can work something out.”
Bitch what the fuck do you think the PRESCRIPTION is, that the communication between the pharmacy and the doctor, last time I went to Walgreens
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 days ago
Walgreens is just generally the worst pharmacy in the country. I’m convinced they intentionally create delays in picking up the prescriptions that are supposedly already ready to get you to buy more stuff in the store part, plus the store portion is always so chronically understaffed good luck being able to buy anything. Oh and now everything is locked up so you can’t even pull stuff off the shelves to attempt to buy anything. And then they wonder why profits keep going down…
ultranaut@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Walgreens once gave me the wrong prescription, which I didn’t notice until after I already taken some. It was some weird drug for schizophrenics or something like that and it totally fucked me up to the point I had to take off work for the day. Instead of apologizing or trying to make the situation right the Walgreens pharmacist was a total asshole to me and tried to blame me for what happened, they acted like I had stolen someone else prescription instead of them fucking up and poisoning me.
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
I commented without reading what everyone else had to say, and the first words I typed were, “Is Walgreen’s your pharmacy too?”
What would piss me off is that they would constantly blow up my phone telling me to come get my script, it’s ready. Then I get to the pharmacy, and nothing is ready and I have to stand around awkwardly while I wait for them to fill it.
The final straw was I go in person to request a refill 5 days before I am out of meds. “Oh we haven’t gotten the shipment yet? Come back tomorrow.” So I go back the next day, and the next until I am finally out of meds and they still don’t have it in. Like, bitch, I have been filling this RX here for 2 years, do you mother fuckers not understand how to inventory?
After my last refill was up I had my Dr. start sending my scripts to Hannaford. It’s further away, but when they call me for my RX it’s ready for me when I go to pick it up.
To personify a bit, if I came across Walgreen’s dying in the street, I would step the fuck over their body and keep walking.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
You Americans…I just order my shit wherever I want and have it tomorrow for the best price.
BigDiction@lemmy.world 5 days ago
We have same day supply optimization dialed in…for guns!
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
For some things those might work more efficient than drugs though. That’s a plus, yes?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You forgot the pharmacist who thinks they know more than your doctor and has the gall to opine on your prescription.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Dude.
MDs fuck up prescriptions all the time. You want this.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Yeah pharmacists often know a lot more about drugs than doctors, and they get to focus their whole career on getting good at just that
Zubgub@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
But thats like their main point. Pharmacist do know a lot about drugs. It’s important to know about negative drug interactions and a pharmacist is more likely to catch it since they most likely know all the drugs you are taking. Your GP might not know about the drugs your psychiatrist gave you or that off-label drug your dermatologist gave you because people are horrible at knowing what drugs they are on and for what purpose.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Fair enough. All I really mean is “idgaf some random pharmacist is opposed to stimulants.”
JennaR8r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Honestly I’ve always been surprised how much education is required to be a pharmacist when all they do is put pills into a bottle (obeying whatever the doctor wrote on your prescription) and pass it to you through the window. Then imagine going through all the years of University to get a master’s degree to work in the back of a CVS.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Seriously? They source the drugs, in the correct dosage, or they have to compound a drug, they have to know what other drugs you are on for conflicts that could kill you. They also teach you how to take the drugs correctly.
Why do people who have no fucking clue make comments?
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
There are a lot of bad prescriptions to be honest. The amount of people who are prescribed both Adderall and large fills of benzos is too damn high.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
don’t forget all those opiods the MDs told us were non-addictive.
chunes@lemmy.world 5 days ago
the thing that annoys me is they don’t care that you have a chronic condition. it’s not going to change. i’m going to need this med for the rest of my life.
but they need my doctor to re-up the prescription every 6 months all the same
elbiter@lemmy.world 5 days ago
They do care if you have a chronic condition. If you do, they can charge you as much as they want.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
This is because the doctor is supposed to be monitoring the condition and adjusting to a better med if one exists.
janus2@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
me scrambling every month to get adhd meds in nyc:
first time? 🫠deranger@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
meanwhile, you can get an ounce of meth online for like $200
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 5 days ago
Doctor: for condition A use med B in C manner.
Pharmacist: Oh no, what is he nuts? Never use med B for condition A as it contains flixadidlian cortemolezeum which will react badly to manner C. No you’ll need med D.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 days ago
i mean occasionally the pharmacist is right.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah that’s the pharmacist’s job
frog@feddit.uk 5 days ago
If you are in the US and have a Costco membership, try getting your prescriptions without entering in your insurance. They will put you in the Costco Member Prescription Program. My pills were 75% cheaper. Also this works if you don’t have insurance.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yeah, they refuse to enroll anyone locally if you don’t have insurance. I tried.
Raiderkev@lemmy.world 5 days ago
My wife recently had an issue where it was either an anaphylactic reaction or scombroid poisoning. They treated her at urgent care and prescribed an EpiPen in case it happened again. The pharmacy comes out and says sorry it’s $120. I know my wife has very good insurance so I had to fight with them, surely there’s a generic or something? Then they look into it and say well we have a different kind of one that this prescription covers that’s $5 but it expires in September. I’m like yeah, obviously I’ll take the one that’s 24x cheaper. Like why do we have to do this whole bullshit? Why didn’t you offer that one 1st? Fuck for profit healthcare.
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Fuck any public service for profit.
frog@feddit.uk 5 days ago
I’m not in the medical field but EpiPens are expensive for their autoinjector technology. Having syringes with 0.3 mg of epinephrine ready would be a lot cheaper.
dan1101@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I pick up prescriptions for people and CVS always fascinates me, they have like 6 people running around looking busy but somehow very few prescriptions are being filled.
CaptainPedantic@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Your CVS is staffed? The CVS and Walgreens around me are chronically understaffed. Like one pharmacist and one tech filling prescriptions and handing them out.
Weirdly, the Safeway pharmacy is always very well staffed. 2 pharmacists, 4 techs. I wonder how much better their benefits are than Walgreens.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
well walgreens is pretty much given, seeing as how a PE firm recently bought the company and its in the process of being gutted. alot of old people near that store depend on it, and most other walgreens have closed in our area.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
i have heard CVS intentionally short staffs thier pharmacy and stores, the one years ago 10+ i went to and the one downtown barely has people in it, no wonder they close the stores permanently.
kungen@feddit.nu 5 days ago
Imagine if America switched to using safer prescription methods… like having everything in blister boxes, just like you see with lots of OTC medicine. Just grab the box, print out the prescription sticker, and you’re done. No mistakes, reduced overdose risks, much more traceability, easier stock methods…
Though I can see the appeal in scrambling around, putting loose pills into those funky orange bottles.
Agent641@lemmy.world 5 days ago
In Australia we don’t have pill bottles. Everything comes in blister packs.
You can’t even buy a “bottle” of aspirin or paracetamol, it’s all blister packs.
I think the idea is that if someone is trying to OD, or if a child gets hold of them, they have to pop each pill out individually rather than just pop the cap off one bottle and swallow the lot, which is difficult for children and psychologically slows down the suicidal.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
except amazon is there, you can just buy a bottle of otc pills in large bulks, 1-year, to multi year supply(for antihistamines)
trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf 5 days ago
Lemme guess… Adderall?
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
Blaming pharmacists for things they have no control over, nice. Biggest brain
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Oh, is Walgreen’s your pharmacy too?
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Excuses are the one thing that’s always in stock. Ask your doctor if ℞~cuse~ is right for you.
Soulphite@reddthat.com 5 days ago
We should consult the best and knowledgeable unlicensed pharmacist in 46 states, Grant Harting, on this phenomenon.
BenLeMan@lemmy.world 5 days ago
smh@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
contrast this me picking up my dog’s prescription meds: “ah, shit, that was his last pill!” <calls vet office> “hey, could I get a refill of gabapentin and vetmedin? Let’s toss in some canned food. Sure, I can swing by after work. Thanks!”
From my point of view, the difference is there’s no insurance involved, so I pay out of pocket and no one has to deal with insurance companies. (pet insurance exists, but I’ve done the math and it doesn’t make financial or logistical sense for me.)
I do like my human pharmacy, but all my human meds are generic and not super controlled or abusable. I gave up on ADHD meds.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
fun fact its usually the pharmacy tech that deals with all the bullshit with insurance, the pharamcists rarely do it, they just determine the correct dosage, medicaiton.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Is this AI edited?
ponypuncher@lemmy.world 5 days ago
“Maybe go fuck yourself.”
Will do, thanks!
jambudz@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
The worst is the old people in front of you arguing with them as if they have any ability to do anything. And taking 20 minutes to pick up one medication.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
They learned from all of the mechanics, plumbers, construction crews and electricians. While most of the rest of the world goes broke these folks will do okay. I once called a company to look at a window that needed replacing and the first thing he said when he walked up is “Your shingles are starting to curl”. I went with another company who was more reputable, charged me fairly, and did good work. It’s tough out there.
sanbdra@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Every refill feels like a side quest with surprise fees and a boss fight at the counter.
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Find a local pharmacist if you can.
mang0@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Another meme I cannot relate to because I have the privilege of not living in america
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I live in America take boat loads of meds cause I’m post transplant and don’t have these issues, I think OP needs a new pharmacy
cheat700000007@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yeah, my pharmacy texts me to confirm I want a refill, then I go pick it up. One extra confirmation text and wait a couple days if there are no more refills
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
To be fair, this is generally my experience in the US as well. However, I do recognize that the insurance I get through my union is very good.
lifeinlarkhall@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Haha was thinking the same thing. Minor issues here for certain medication availabilities at times but nothing that would make this meme relatable to many people!
jobbies@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Americans just don’t get that brand name medications are exactly the same as generic ones either 😅
TAG@lemmy.world 4 days ago
With prescriptions, it is not about what the customer wants, it is about what brands the insurance wants to cover (and getting a doctor that does not write a brand specific prescription). If an insurance company only covers a weird brand of a common (but expensive) medicine, the customer either has to hunt for a pharmacy that has it in stock, wait for their local pharmacy to order it (in either case delaying when the insurance company has to pay for it), or buy the in-stock brand without any insurance coverage. The insurance can still claim they cover the drug while paying less for it.
At one point, I was on a medicine that had a very high co-pay for the brand name and would not cover the generic. It was so high that it was cheaper for me to buy the generic uninsured instead of paying the co-pay.
Oyml77@lemmy.today 4 days ago
The active ingredients are exactly the same. The inactive ingredients may differ and there may be some slight differences in bioavailability that for most people are not significant. There is no reason that the vast majority of people can’t take a generic equivalent of a branded medication. That said, there are sometimes exceptions that need to be considered on a cases-by-case basis. Anyone who says “I can’t take generic medications” is full of shit.
Source: I am a licensed pharmacist.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 days ago
The fun part is the generics aren’t always the exact same medication! In most cases it is a 1:1 between name brand and generic but there’s always edgecases, whether due to allergies or quality control or sometimes the recipe differences actually impact the potence and performance of the medication
mangobanana@discuss.online 4 days ago
Not all of them are though my wife can only take the name brand of cimbalta because the generic fucks with her body
davidagain@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yup. In the uk, you pay the same charge for each prescription you pick up, whatever it is (or you get an annual flat fee pass if you get more than one a month). So if the pharmacy only found an expensive version, that’s a them problem, not a me problem.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Pharmacists deal with drug shortages worldwide.