LittleLab4CF
Super Moderator
Last year was my first year on Medicare with supplemental insurance and prescription coverage from Anthem BCBS. My wife is a retired state employee and we buy our supplemental insurance through PERA. As usual, for us, we attended the meeting explaining the new version of insurance.
It now appears that they were guilty of glossing over some important things. Our policy and the first prescriptions have arrived. Anthem's insurance arm Express Scripts has created a Specialty Drugs category. It's as if they threw a dart at a chart of diseases and hit CF.
Creon and Dexilant have been placed in this new category. These are just drugs I take, it is not everything that other CFers might need. Other changes, seemingly small changes in common drugs are really going to take a chunk out of our fixed income. One drug went from $2.35 to $22. I'm typical for a lot of CFers with 14 prescribed medications. In my case I can absorb the cost increase but it will make vital drugs like Creon potentially unaffordable for many.
I got a hint of the coming changes from a CU Medical Center GI doctor who was evaluating me for a nerve block last year when he suddenly asked what health insurance I had. His surprise was over a Creon prescription that I had been receiving for the last year, while on Medicare and a decent supplemental Insurance. I asked why he was surprised and got the impression that some of the population is being underserved to deny something so necessary as digestive enzymes.
So far, I am safe, at least for another year. It is not very comforting considering the climate of unabashed greed in the corporate world, and sadly I fear, their government representatives, bought and paid for.
Check your new insurance, or renewed insurance for specific drugs you have counted on. Just a thought.
LL
It now appears that they were guilty of glossing over some important things. Our policy and the first prescriptions have arrived. Anthem's insurance arm Express Scripts has created a Specialty Drugs category. It's as if they threw a dart at a chart of diseases and hit CF.
Creon and Dexilant have been placed in this new category. These are just drugs I take, it is not everything that other CFers might need. Other changes, seemingly small changes in common drugs are really going to take a chunk out of our fixed income. One drug went from $2.35 to $22. I'm typical for a lot of CFers with 14 prescribed medications. In my case I can absorb the cost increase but it will make vital drugs like Creon potentially unaffordable for many.
I got a hint of the coming changes from a CU Medical Center GI doctor who was evaluating me for a nerve block last year when he suddenly asked what health insurance I had. His surprise was over a Creon prescription that I had been receiving for the last year, while on Medicare and a decent supplemental Insurance. I asked why he was surprised and got the impression that some of the population is being underserved to deny something so necessary as digestive enzymes.
So far, I am safe, at least for another year. It is not very comforting considering the climate of unabashed greed in the corporate world, and sadly I fear, their government representatives, bought and paid for.
Check your new insurance, or renewed insurance for specific drugs you have counted on. Just a thought.
LL
