Mail Order Meds Delayed for Many

[Ohiogal]

From the Columbus Dispatch:

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Imagine the terror of being diagnosed with cancer.

Your doctor writes a prescription that you pray will save your life. You go to the hospital or oncology clinic’s in-house pharmacy. The medicine is right there on the shelf, but you’re told the only way your insurance will cover your medication, which might cost $10,000 or more per month, is if you get it through the mail.

So, you go home empty-handed and wait. If you’re lucky, the medicine will arrive in just a couple of days. But it could be up to a month before delivery of the drugs.

Uncounted numbers of Ohio cancer patients don’t have to imagine this dilemma. They have experienced it because health insurers and the pharmacy benefit managers hired by insurers dictate it.

http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180603/mail-order-pharmacy-system-delays-meds-for-some-patients

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Of course, this is all about maximizing profits, not about what's best for the patient. Appalling!

[Glorfindel]

1. Hooray for "free enterprise!" Isn't capitalism great?

There may be, somewhere on this planet, something crueler and more useless than the "health insurance industry." I have yet to discover it.

[Ohiogal]

2. We need to get insurance companies out of our healthcare decisions!

Yeah, like that will ever happen ....

[3Hotdogs]

5. Try Lockheed-Martin, Grumman, Forman Dow Chemical.

[mucifer]

3. I am a pediatric hospice nurse Opioids are in huge shortage now We were told

One main reason is pharmaceutical companies buying each other out and deciding not to carry the same medications as the company they bought out because you know greed pure and simple.

It's not just with opioids it's with lots of other medications. I had a patient on crazy high doses of IV pain medications for metastatic cancer and it was so stressful hearing from the infusion pharmacy how worried they were about getting what she needed from the drug company. Luckily she got it and was able to die peacefully at home. But, I worry so much about this.

This has to stop! We just can't go on like this with these evil greedy monsters controlling the medications.

[Ohiogal]

4. Thank you for posting, mucifer

Are we the only country in the developed world that puts profits over patients? I wonder. It is indeed cruel and appalling.

[TEB]

6. Criminals