PSA: Fire Your Pharmacy and Find One That Respects and Takes Care of You
K, so I see posts wayyyy to often where the OP is crying and miserable about the way their pharmacy treats them like shit and never is on top of making sure they have your meds available and/or ready for you come refill day.
If this is ever the case, you need to fire your pharmacy and find a better one. Usually, smaller mom+pop or smaller local chains will appreciate your business and help you ideally with these things without you even having to ask (or only requiring one-time orientation on what your preferences are as they relate to servics they usually do or should be offering:
fill your meds automatically without you having to ask
ensuring it is in stock without you having to worry in order for them to fill said refills
advise you of any complications or further steps required of you to help them make sure you're taken care of and consistent with refills
remind YOU about shit, not the other way around. My pharmacy might as well be my unpaid intern/executive assistant with all things medical as they pertain to my business/the privelege of getting said business I grant them
delivery: this is non-negotiable. If they ain't delivering, I ain't playin'. My pharmacy knows that to be my drug dealer, they gotta come to me. Cuz I ain't leaving the couch to get my drugs
deal with dr for you if any discrepancy or error is in the way. This is the beauty of medical practices with adjoining pharms. Ethics be damned, vertical/horizontal integration 4 the win!
That is all. Your pharmacy should feel so lucky to have a good get like AD(H)D patients, I would rather have that then a money printer if I was a pharmacy owner.
Spread the word and f all that noise. You are worthy to be waited on and catered to, controlled substance or otherwise.
Not sure if this is cogent but I take rhe 2nd rarest (prescribed/available) medication next to Desoxyn and I've never had an issue getting it filled, even in the depths of the Great Adderall Shortage although it wasn't Adderall so not sure how relevant my n=1 is this context
Anecdata here in the US, but my local mom and pop pharmacy (which I love) currently would lose $200/mo on my vyvanse because of my insurance and the whole generic vyvanse nonsense. This system sucks.
For the time being, I fill my vyvanse at Walgreens and hope they're losing $200/mo on it. I fill everything else at the mom and pop, until they let me know the situation is better.
As someone who works at a company that analyzes the US Healthcare market.... you'd be amazed at how much shit they do that should be illegal.
Did you know that it's not uncommon in the US for drug manufacturing to pay consumers' out of pocket cost for really expensive medication? I.e. some medication would cost you 3,000/month to fill after insurance so the manufacturer offers you 3,000 dollars every month to take it.
Does that sound good? Maybe on the surface but what's actually going on is that the list price of your medication might be 12,000/mo and the manufacturer did some research and determined you're unlikely to be able to afford it so they'd be missing out on their 10,500/mo in profit from you. But gosh golly, do you know what's better than 0/mo? 7,500/mo, if they hand you a drug card that covers your out of pocket costs, they can still get the money your insurance company would cover, yay!
And you know what that sort of money printing machine encourages? Prescribing your drug to everyone!
BTW, don't feel bad for the insurers here, they're utter fucking bastards too. Everybody in this market is fucking awful, even, and especially, the fucking hospitals.
Should be, but it essentially locks in those patients to a specific pharmacy for a negotiated rate. “Okay, we will give you an extra 10% discount on prescriptions, but all of your insured have to go through us” type deal.