Things that drive up medical costs aggravate me. I'm generally a pretty easygoing person. Two, three, no several things have ticked me off in this regard in the last couple of days, or as my husband Charles' mother Mattie would say, "Pitched me off!"
One is that the pharmacist from Walgreens called two days in a row, first thing in the morning leaving urgent-sounding messages on my voicemail that he needed to talk to me about a prescription. When I returned his call, he was actually calling about a nonexistent prescription. He was calling to insist that I should be taking a cholesterol-lowering prescription -- even though my cholesterol and other lipids are perfectly normal. Despite my telling him that my blood levels are checked regularly and are perfectly in range, he kept talking over me and insisting that I need to be on a cholesterol-lowering drug.
Next I received a text message and a phone call from the pharmacy that a prescription for a drug I did not recognize was ready to be picked up. What?!? I Googled the name of it and it is a medication I take, but it is by a different manufacturer, so that's why the name was unfamiliar. However, the prescription was shown to have been ordered by a prescriber who moved to Florida 2 months ago!!! Not only that, I currently have a 3-month supply on-hand from the doctor who replaced that doctor.
To me, it's outrageous for Three Reasons:
- It increases a patient's out-of-pocket expenses.
- It increases the expenses to the insurance company.
- It increases the pharmacy's cost by needlessly spending their professional staff's time filling the prescription and then having to put the drug back in stock. What a waste -- all the way around!
My BIGGEST ANNOYANCE today is regarding an UNSOLICITED LAB-IN-A-BOX sent to me by LABCORP.
I've laid-out all of the supplies included in the double-layered box and test kit for the photo that accompanies this post.
Imagine the cost of sending a mass mailing/targeted mailing of that sort, trolling for diabetic patients to send their urine specimens?!?
In my brother's later years of life, he 'had no filters' and would freely speak his mind about anything; he would use the expression "all that crap!" to refer to things he thought were useless. I can just hear him saying that about these unsolicited test kits from LabCorp.
The LabCorp materials create the impression that this is something you must do and must return within 30 days. They guide you carefully step-by-step on how to collect and package the urine specimen, as if you're a certified lab technician. Somewhere in the fine print, it admits that doing this is optional.
By the way, this is the third time LabCorp has sent one of these kits to me!!!
Personally, I think it is all an outrageous, wasteful marketing ploy by LabCorp and they should not be allowed to continue to do it.
Now I'll get down off my little soapbox...
#LabCorp #Walgreens
