It’s frustrating to see insurance companies send out misleading information without verifying its validity first. One insurance company sent letters to hundreds of our Medicare patients, advising them to switch to other pharmacies for better savings. Clearly no attempt was made by them to find out that many of the medications that their patients could get for free at one of the insurance company’s preferred pharmacies happens to largely coincide with our list of Essential Medications. Our Essential Medications are drugs that we provide for free to all patients regardless of what insurance plan they have. In addition to this we are also providing financial assistance with the rather high deductibles that some of their plans charge and assistance with their higher tier medications that might otherwise have copays of over $100. It might even be worth adding that this letter was worded in such a way that many customers thought they were not allowed to use us any more at all, which would be a violation of federal law with regards to Medicare insurance plan guidelines.
To add insult to injury, this same insurance company, in the aforementioned letter, is promoting their closed source network called Essential Pharmacy Network, whereas we had been referring to our pharmacy as ‘Your Essential Pharmacy’ long before they adopted the name that they use for their pharmacy network. This network tries to redirect patients away from our store and disrupts the patient-provider relationship we have built. They have also told news sources that more pharmacies can join this network if they want to; regardless of our numerous attempts to join, we never received any positive response.
Despite this, social workers from the related health system still come to us for updates on how we assist Medicare patients in affording their vital medications. We also offer free assistance in organizing their prescriptions and even provide free delivery services when necessary. It’s disheartening to witness insurance companies sowing chaos and confusion, ultimately impeding our ability to deliver high-quality care for our patients.
If you are one of our Medicare patients that recently received this letter, please don’t let them deceive you. You can still use our pharmacy and benefit from our cost savings.
Thank you for caring enough to read this,
Sean Parsons, President
Lost and Found Pharmacy
BTW, I hope you liked my cartooned version of Shannon.