Prescription drug care

By Guido Tuesday, April 03, 2007

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This is the final day of my two week battle with the caremark prescription program regarding my medicines.

25 people in 10 phone calls, ungodly amounts of time, on hold, only to receive we cannot seem to help you.

Well gee how can I say this clearer. The stat pen for the Imitrix comes with only two vials, The stat pen is the needle to inject the medicine. The imitrix injection vials (I'm allowed 9 boxs in a 30 day period) will not go through because I bought the sat pen and the vials are the medicine you put in the stat pen to give yourself the medication. Your computer system explains I cannot have for 30 days because I already have the stat pen. It's one prescription People! Why have the stat pen without the medication..... HEEELLLLOOOOO!

I have given up. Complete utter morons. Why pay for insurance?

All this with nasty nasty migraine pain..

Comments (5) | Add comment

Malgoska

4/13/07 12:04pm

Although with different medical problem, we are in the same boat as you are. Caremark carelessly slapped my name on my husband's prescription, and made an unauthorized switch from one med to another. Now they blame my husband's doctor for both. I've been trying to straighten it up for a month now, countless conversations with nincompoops, countless minutes on hold, countless "cover my a**" lies. They talk to me as if I was a difficult 3-yr old with limited comprehension of the spoken language. It sucks to be Caremark customer, it sucks to be sentenced to Caremark by one's insurance company.

loaconstrictor

4/19/07 6:44pm

Oh my goodness... does your ordeal sound familiar to me.

My prescription insurance was through Caremark last year. They did not put through a SINGLE one of my prescription orders without making a mistake.

Getting help is impossible - every person you talk to tells you something else. Going up the chain to management doesn't help, either.

My worst encounter with Caremark was for a certain Inderal LA prescription. It took 3 weeks to resolve, because Caremark told me the MEDICATION DOES NOT EXIST, and never had. Odd, because I had a bottle of it at home from the local pharmacy. Call after call, day after day. Finally, I actually started reading the prescribing information to a manager from RXlist.com. He put me on hold for a minute, came back and said there had been a mistake. My Inderal LA prescription was keyed in as propranolol. That was the problem.

Hello? Propranolol IS the generic of Inderal, though there isn't an LA version in generic, I don't think. But HOW HARD could it have been to figure that out? Seriously. This was at least my 20th call, as I was calling a few times a day.

Then he told me that I'd have to pay extra if I wanted expedited delivery, since I was almost out. Oh, heck no. This was not my error. Or my doctor's. I had a copy of the script to prove it.

45 minutes and 2 supervisors later, my med was FINALLY expedited to me.

The worst thing was that no one even cared at "Care"mark, and no one ever apologized. It was like I was burdening them for wanting to take the meds that I need and was required to get from them. Oy!

I feel your pain. My company switched to Wal-green's this year because there were so many Caremark complaints, and it's been a lot better - the formulary is more restrictive, but it's worth it not to have to fight to get my meds.

I wish you luck, and I hope you never have to deal with this again - I'm thinkin' of ya!

Guido

4/22/07 5:21pm

Caremark saga continued. They called me last Wednesday. I was in the middle of a harrowing exhausting migraine and had the phone near me, as my husband was calling periodically to check on me.

So, in agony, not looking at the phone, presuming it was my gracious, loving, supportive husband, I weakly say Hhhhello. The response is is Mr. ooooooo available, brain thinking, What? not my hubby, I respond, weakly that I am unable to proceed with an intellingent conversation could they call back. (I was not leaving my dark bathroom to take a message). My response from this caremark representative proceeds in this caring manner. NO! we are calling for Mr. OOOO regarding his account, and we need to speak with him now! I hang up!

A few hours later when I'm not in the restroom but laying in bed they so graciously r/call. Same rude individual, who refuses to indicate the issue and indentify what company they are calling from? Well, you guess it, I hang up. The next day when I'm at normal pain level, I receive another phone call from same pleasant individual demanding to s/w Mr. oooo. I indicate that they are calling my private residence, I do not have to s/w them and if there is an issue w/ an account, The owe us money. Well, I am transferred to a problem resolution individual who's intellingence surpassed cow poop. No outstanding balances and they needed information from me regarding my medicines, which I so politely deferred from answering and advised them: quoting from "Teri Roberts" book "My Bible" section on FDA not controlling them and what they were doing was illegal and if they continued to harrass me and ignore my Doctors prescription I was bringing this situation to media attention.

To date no reponse.....

Anonymous

5/ 1/07 12:57am

Yeah, AVOID CAREMARK. They treat their employees even worse than they treat their customers. My best advice for those who are currently using Caremark services, you need to DEMAND that your company drop Caremark IMMEDIATELY and swith to more compitent hands such as Medco or ExpressScripts. The merger with CVS is NASTY and they laid off an entire callcenter. That is why service is so bad these days. They over-work their employees and skimp on staff so the customer has to wait 10 minutes just to speak to a rep who could honestly care less (because Caremark treats their reps horribly!)... Caremark is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to Federal Employees. I know because I worked for them and the customers told me just that every day I worked there!! AVOID CAREMARK AT ALL COSTS!!

From Within

5/ 1/07 1:12am

The problem with Caremark is that like any other call center, Caremark hires people who do not have a medical or pharmacutical background to take calls from customers requesting their meds. Most Caremark employees can not even tell the difference between a brand name or generic medication! That is probably what happened with your inderal / propranalol. The main problem with Caremark is that the person who answered the phone was probably working somewhere else as a telemarketer selling magazines a few months ago. The caliber of people Caremark hires is not very high. All that is needed in order to work in customer service at Caremark is a highschool diploma. They hire inexperienced people, put them through a joke of a trainining class, pay them peanuts, and then cross their fingers and expect miracles. Now that is THE PROBLEM with Caremark!!

Prescription drug care

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