doodledee

Now that Libby is a stay@home mom she and Nick have moved to my health and dental insurance. The transition has been smooth for the most part, but there have been a few hiccups with prescriptions because stuff that was covered under her old plan isn't covered the same way under my plan and because nobody really understands how any of it works and you have to call 10 different people and it understandably takes time to get something as complicated as "entering a new number into a computer" to get figured out to the point where you only have to pay the $11 it says you should have to on your card instead of the $300 and 18 hours of community service that the clerk at that pharmacy insists that you owe.

Anyway, so I was on the phone today with a remarkably helpful customer service rep at Medica and after she got done explaining why some pill we need was going to cost a whole heck of a lot more than I thought it should, she tried to sell me on using the Medica mail-order pharmacy for all my medicinal needs. Initially I told her I wasn't interested because I prefer the inconvenience and long lines at my neighborhood pharmacy and also because I don't support sending our valuable domestic pharmacist jobs to some offshore warehouse pharmacy in India.

That's when she told me that if I ordered 3 months worth of refills through their pharmacy that I only have to pay for two.

That's when I asked for more information.

She didn't really have any more, but she repeated what she had said before and I listened again. Seemed like a pretty good deal. I'm going to assume that Medica can afford to offer such a good deal for two reasons: volume, volume and volume. And all this volume translates into buying power which translates into leverage with the drug companies which translates into cheaper prices which translates into buy 2 get one free for me. Or maybe they just import all their drugs from Canada. Or maybe they just "hide" the "discount" in the "huge increases" in the premiums that seem to happen every year. Who knows.

Either way, it reminded me again how I boggled I was by the provision in the new Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage that prevents the government from using its own buying power - in that it would be buying drugs for all seniors on Medicare - to "negotiate" lower prices with drug companies.

Remind me again of why that is? I forget. Is it because we still don't trust the government?

The new Minnesota job market: Health care jobs thriving [strib]
Three bills challenge Medicare drug benefit [kc.com]
Canada's homepage [canada]