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okay, i would like to take a minute and tell you all how amazing my pharmacy is.
i worked at CVS for 4 years, and saw a lot of horrible bureaucratic red tape fuck a lot of people over. i saw ridiculous prices that i thought were unavoidable, until i started doing payroll and budgeting and saw exactly what profits were for our store alone. it made me fucking sick, and i think that might have been one of the major things to make me want to leave. there was a time i paid for a little old lady's meds because she was going to pay for them with a collection of silver dollars that she had gotten for each year each her children, grand children and great grandchildren were born. i couldn't let her, but she would die without her meds. these are things that i saw and heard on a regular basis there.
when justin's contract with verizon ended we found ourselves without insurance (the insurance we had was ridiculous anyways, $800/mo and it covered a little more than jack and shit). i was freaking out because as you all know, i'm a veritable pharmacopeia. after extensive research into med prices and calling 4876351254612453 pharmacies, i discovered that costco pharmacy charged just about as much as we paid WITH insurance. talking to the pharmacist, he said that they don't charge any more than 15% than they pay for the meds themselves, and that's for non-members. members pay even less. for example: my wellbutrin without insurance pretty much everywhere is $126ish, at costco it's $42 bucks, and on top of that if you're a member without insurance they have another discount program to knock more off.
the thing about generic wellbutrin is that it comes from a few different varieties. there is one in particular, budeproprion, that is historically horrible. the first time i got my script filled at costco they filled it with one of the better generic brands, but this last time i saw the dreaded yellow oval pills i got from rite aid when we lived in kenmore. the problem is this: while wellbutrin xl is no longer under patent, the extended release mechanism is, so companies pretty much have free reign to come up with whatever way they want to create an extended release effect. the evil generic effectively has the same amount of medication for all intents and purposes, but the release level and timing is waaaaay off. in laymen terms, this means that a perfectly controlled bipolar/depressive girl who has been very even-keel will go plummeting off the deep end and everything ever is the most horrible thing to ever happen in the whole world.
so why am i telling you all of this? i called the pharmacy today in a last ditch effort knowing that i could not survive a month like this (and my marriage might not do so well under this kind of pressure... justin is understanding but everyone has their breaking point, i'm not willing to find his). i kept my composure long enough to explain the situation and the tech told me to hold on while she spoke to the pharmacist (who is REALLY nice). when she returned, she said to bring in what i have left and they'll replace it with the other generic.
what.
CVS would have NEVER under ANY circumstance done that (well, i could think of one pharmacist who would...). so as i finish my lunch, i'm off to go get my crazy back on track.
and that is how awesome my pharmacy is.
i worked at CVS for 4 years, and saw a lot of horrible bureaucratic red tape fuck a lot of people over. i saw ridiculous prices that i thought were unavoidable, until i started doing payroll and budgeting and saw exactly what profits were for our store alone. it made me fucking sick, and i think that might have been one of the major things to make me want to leave. there was a time i paid for a little old lady's meds because she was going to pay for them with a collection of silver dollars that she had gotten for each year each her children, grand children and great grandchildren were born. i couldn't let her, but she would die without her meds. these are things that i saw and heard on a regular basis there.
when justin's contract with verizon ended we found ourselves without insurance (the insurance we had was ridiculous anyways, $800/mo and it covered a little more than jack and shit). i was freaking out because as you all know, i'm a veritable pharmacopeia. after extensive research into med prices and calling 4876351254612453 pharmacies, i discovered that costco pharmacy charged just about as much as we paid WITH insurance. talking to the pharmacist, he said that they don't charge any more than 15% than they pay for the meds themselves, and that's for non-members. members pay even less. for example: my wellbutrin without insurance pretty much everywhere is $126ish, at costco it's $42 bucks, and on top of that if you're a member without insurance they have another discount program to knock more off.
the thing about generic wellbutrin is that it comes from a few different varieties. there is one in particular, budeproprion, that is historically horrible. the first time i got my script filled at costco they filled it with one of the better generic brands, but this last time i saw the dreaded yellow oval pills i got from rite aid when we lived in kenmore. the problem is this: while wellbutrin xl is no longer under patent, the extended release mechanism is, so companies pretty much have free reign to come up with whatever way they want to create an extended release effect. the evil generic effectively has the same amount of medication for all intents and purposes, but the release level and timing is waaaaay off. in laymen terms, this means that a perfectly controlled bipolar/depressive girl who has been very even-keel will go plummeting off the deep end and everything ever is the most horrible thing to ever happen in the whole world.
so why am i telling you all of this? i called the pharmacy today in a last ditch effort knowing that i could not survive a month like this (and my marriage might not do so well under this kind of pressure... justin is understanding but everyone has their breaking point, i'm not willing to find his). i kept my composure long enough to explain the situation and the tech told me to hold on while she spoke to the pharmacist (who is REALLY nice). when she returned, she said to bring in what i have left and they'll replace it with the other generic.
what.
CVS would have NEVER under ANY circumstance done that (well, i could think of one pharmacist who would...). so as i finish my lunch, i'm off to go get my crazy back on track.
and that is how awesome my pharmacy is.