home delivery for meds

Does anyone use these services? Save me a monthly trip. My CVS doesn't offer though my insurance does. Has anyone tried? would you recommend?

thank you

Mail order is the way to go. I come home from work and my 3 months is sitting on the step waiting for me. Can it get any easier?

Yes, I do mail order -- I'm limited to the option offered by my insurance company, but I'm fine with it. It's really convenient!

Wait until you have to talk to them for any reason.

Using mail order pharmacy helps your insurance company more than you do. I was "encouraged" to use mail order pharmacy by Oxford, then Medco now Express script. The co-pay used to be slightly lower than local pharmacy. I was happy, until I had to talk to them for various issues.

You will notice lab trained chimps can do a better job than their customer service.

Now, I do not use mail order pharmacy unless I save significant amount.

I am also very skeptical of mail order connected with your insurance. I too believe that it benefits the insurance company more than it does you. I guess it works fine when it works but then I have heard horror stories when things do not go as planned. My insurance company keeps on begging me to go this route, claiming that I can save "as much as" but then when I grill them about what the exact dollar amount of my savings would be they can't answer the question. Until they can give me some assurances, which apparently they can't, I'm opting out. I know prescriptions and refills are just hours or maybe one day away going through my local pharmacy.

Gary, it saves me a lot of money, because when I do the mail order, I get three months' worth of my meds and only pay two months' worth of copay. If I filled at a local pharmacy I'd have to pay the three copays.

Asacol hd 3 months mail order cost me 120 at the pharmacy I pay 160 for 3 months. I prefer the pharmacy but 40 bucks is 40 bucks I can spend on something else

My mail order I pay $5 for generic for 3 months or $17 for name brand for three months no matter what the med is. I don't care if the mail order is connect to the insurance. I save by getting 2 months free. have had this insurance for 26 years with no problems.. :)

seems like a no brainer - if it's cheaper ..... well then, it's cheaper !

where's the fear factor -- ?

I like my small town drug store so I've give them my business - they are great and for me the extra money I spend is well worth it -

but if my only option was a big corp pharmacy, I would mail order without hesitation -

I get my meds through the mail. I love it! I get 3 months worth of any prescription for 20 to 30 bucks, depending on the medication.

Serenity Now said...
No, Somedude, don't say Canada, because it must only work that way in Quebec. It sure doesn't work that way in either province where I have filled prescriptions: Ontario and BC.

It doesn't?

This is how it goes for me.

The doc prescribes, I dunno, Imuran. In some cases it's fwd directly to my pharmacy and I go there and get it. Depending on the price, I might have to pay something, like 10$. But to me, I cal lthis free, I mean, 5$, 10$, keep the change. The pharmacist will explain how the med works and then I've off with the med.

In other cases, I go with the script in hand.

Actually, I went through similar things when I got meds in Ontario.

No mail order meds, copay and other zig zag bullcrap.



...wait a minute, what are you filling?

You know how much I pay for my Humira prescription now? I big fat 0$ dollar.

They wanted me to pay 900$ a year, I told them to get the f.. .out of here and they asked well how much I want to pay. I said nothing. They asked me to send them a pay stub. I sent a pay stud and I told them I need to pay this and that and this and that.

Came to 0$ My Sunlife + Progress Humira covers everything.

In short, I go the pharm, I get my crap, I leave.

garylouisville said...
I am also very skeptical of mail order connected with your insurance. I too believe that it benefits the insurance company more than it does you. I guess it works fine when it works but then I have heard horror stories when things do not go as planned. My insurance company keeps on begging me to go this route, claiming that I can save "as much as" but then when I grill them about what the exact dollar amount of my savings would be they can't answer the question. Until they can give me some assurances, which apparently they can't, I'm opting out. I know prescriptions and refills are just hours or maybe one day away going through my local pharmacy.

I don't bring this up in real life but I do work for one of those evil medical insurance companys.

 

It also depends on how you get your insurance as to who really benefits from mail order.  If you get your insurance through your employer and they are a good size company then most likely it is an administrative service only.  Which in that case your employer is actuacually paying a fee to the insurance provider to provide all the services but the employer is also the one footing the bill for the actual claims.  So in this case in addition to any copayment savings there is also savings to your employer because they recieve deeper discounts through the mail order hence why they provide the copay incentive for you to use the mail order.  So it may help keep down your insurance costs through probably not all that much.

Just thought I would share some insights.  And I do agree that the customer service can suck.  My worst experiences have been with Express scripts and their specialty pharmacy Curascript.  The service was so much better when the pharmacy benefits were managed in house.

Check the prices before committing to mail-order. I too thought this would be a great idea...however when I checked the price the mail-order of generic Rowasa was $1000 (I am not kidding) for 30 days vs. $280 at pharmacy. I have high deductible so I pay for everything.

I called my insurance company and they checked it and confirmed that was not a mistake. What I see is taking advantage of people who are bedridden, etc. Also I thought mail-order would send 3 months at a time and was told no, only one month per order.

Another sucky thing about insurance is that whenever I go on vacation and need a refill while out of town I have to call my insurance company to get approval of getting enough Rx meds to cover me. And I pay for all my meds! I have to ask permission to get meds I am paying in full for. These are not controlled substances, these are regular anti-inflammatory pills. And even more annoying I cannot request them until 7 days before leaving town which makes it knuckle-biting if my pharmacy slips up and doesn't have enough in stock until the day before I leave. I ran into this around a holiday (there are sooo many 3 and 4 day holidays) and it was literally the day before leaving that I could get my Rx meds.

I despise insurance companies being in charge of my health, telling when and how I can get my legal meds when they aren't paying for anything themselves.