Venting...

I generally try to stay away from griping about work. The past few weeks have me wanting to break that rule. It is not just the fact that we are so busy, some of the things that I see go on make me shake my head in disgust. Unfortunately, my head has been shaking for 2 weeks straight. For about 2 weeks now, we have been averaging more than 450 prescriptions a day during the week. That may not sound like much, so let me break it down a little better. If we fill 480 prescriptions on one day, and we are open 12 hours (9-9) then we average 40 prescriptions an hour. That is less than 2 minutes to fill each prescription. If there is an insurance problem, or a question for the doctor, do you think either of those will take less than 2 minutes to fix? Do you see how the process could get backed up? I could go on and on about how many we fill and the time needed and the drive thru, but I just want to talk about a phone call I had today. On Saturday, a young lady brought us a prescription and her insurance card and said she would be calling to find out the price. The prescription was for Nuvaring (it is a vaginal ring used for birth control-birth control pills without the pills). She called back today to get the price. I had to do some work to get her insurance to work which involved my calling the insurance to get the correct info to bill the prescription. When I had fixed the problem, I called her back to tell her what her copay would be. After her insurance paid their part, her copay was $45 for the Nuvaring. She was surprised by this and told her mother (who was in the background) how much the copay was. Her mother took the phone from her and said "Are you kidding me? They said the price without insurance was $60! Are you telling me that the insurance is not going to pay any more than that to give my sexually active daughter birth control so she does not get pregnant? (to her daughter) Well you are just going to have to hold it, because I do not have that kind of money," click. Since I did not get much of a chance to reply, I have been thinking of some of the things I could have said to her to try and help her with her terrible predicament:

1. This is the good answer, the one I really would have said, had she given me the chance. "If your daughter is able to take birth control in tablet form, there are two that I could recommend to you that would be $9 per month whether you have insurance or not."
2. Now for the answers that the lady made me WISH I could say. "Since your daughter obviously is not responsible enough to remember to take a pill everyday, should she really be having sex?"
3. Two words: Chastity belt
4. Well you might want to find out what the copay is for Valtrex (herpes med) because it sounds like you will be needing it soon and it is really expensive.
5. Since Wal-Mart sells Plan-B for about $35, you could use it afterwards and save $10! (Yeah, that one is kind of harsh)
6. I understand your frustration with the insurance, it is ridiculous for them to make you pay more for a prescription just because there are cheaper alternatives that work just as well, but with less convenience.
7. Did you know that some insurances do not cover birth control at all? Man those moms and dads are REALLY up a creek! How could an insurance not keep ITS responsibility to make sure your sexually active daughter does not get pregnant?

Like I said, I do not like griping because I tend to get on rants. It just does not sit well with me sometimes that I am the fall guy for insurances, doctors, stupid kids, you name it and for some reason someone is chewing me out and hanging up on me. Sorry to be venting like this but I could not let that one go.