Bill Roper's Journal

Well, that was entertaining.

The Walgreens computer system stopped sending me notices that my prescriptions were due for refill and/or renewal, so I ended up waiting until Saturday to try to refill one of my prescriptions which I was going to run out of on Monday. This was, sadly, a miserable failure, because Monday was Labor Day and the pharmacy was closed. So I took my last pill and headed to Walgreens on Tuesday where I explained to them that my doctor had closed his old office and moved to a new location (as I had informed them previously), so *all* of the prescriptions needed to go to the new location for renewals.

And then they told me that attempts to send things to the new office were failing. This appears to be because the old office wrote the prescriptions to "Bill", while the new office has me filed under "William". Ok, fine. In the meantime, they gave me three pills of the med that I was out of as an emergency refill with no charge, which was good.

I had spent time the previous week speaking to the folks at OptumRX, because some of the prescriptions there were similarly messed up. In this case, OptumRX had the correct contact information, but MyUHC (which is where I place the orders) still had the old contact information for the doctor, so prescription requests were going to the not-very-helpful old number.

Thinking that this should be simpler, I called the new office and asked them to send new prescriptions to Walgreens for the four items that I get there. This includes my Ozempic prescription, because I can use a manufacturer's discount card at Walgreens to substantially reduce my copay for that particular drug. I emphasized to the poor young woman at the new office that the Ozempic prescription positively could not be sent to OptumRX, but needed to go to Walgreens.

So last night, I was sitting at the Cubs game when I got a text message from OptumRX letting me know that they had gotten the request to fill my Ozempic prescription and that they would be processing it. I said bad words. I tried to log into the OptumRX site while at the game, but I hadn't done it from my phone before so I needed the code that could only be sent to my home phone, which I was nowhere near. Gretchen got me the code, but I decided that I would just have to wait to deal with this until I got home.

Meanwhile, the Cubs won.

When I got home, I logged into the OptumRX site, checked the status of the order, and was informed that it had been canceled and that I would not be charged for it. I was greatly relieved.

Today, we had an online training session at work. Moments after the seminar started, I received a text message from OptumRX letting me know that a pharmacist was reviewing my order for Ozempic, that they would be shipping it, and they would charge me twice as much for it as I pay at Walgreens.

I left the seminar and walked into the other room to call OptumRX -- or actually, to wait for a callback from them, where you request the callback, the phone rings immediately, you press 1 to tell them that you are there, and you are then put on hold waiting for a representative. This does not seem like the way that callbacks should work, but I was not on hold for an extremely long time before I got some poor victim who explained to me that the order had been canceled.

Then *why*, I demanded, had I seen that it was canceled last night, yet this morning I had gotten a text message indicating that it was being prepared by a pharmacist to ship? Oh. "I will go make sure that it is canceled now."

Will I receive an email confirming this at my email address on file?

"Yes, you will. It may not arrive until this afternoon."

(Narrator: No email has yet arrived. The Spam bucket has been checked.)

I called the doctor's office again and explained that the prescription requests had gone awry and prescriptions that should have gone to Walgreens went to OptumRX instead. The nice young woman that I spoke to checked and it turns out that *three* of the prescriptions went to Walgreens; it was only the prescription for Ozempic (which is the only one that would be notably more expensive in this case) went to OptumRX. She would make sure that the OptumRX prescription was well and truly canceled and would resend it to Walgreens.

Meanwhile, Walgreens has now tried to refill the med that I was out of twice; once with insurance paying for it and once not. It's an old, cheap med, so "not" was less than $20, but it looks like they eventually figured out that they had tried to refill that prescription twice. I say that, because I headed out for lunch after the seminar was over at 2 PM (and I was pretty hungry, because I had had nothing to eat so far today) and got a phone call from Walgreens indicating that two of my prescriptions were ready, but the Ozempic was delayed because of an insurance issue.

That would be because OptumRX had sent a message to UHC telling them that they were filling the Ozempic, so I would not be able to get the insurance to pay for yet another Ozempic injector at Walgreens. *thud* *thud* *thud* On the other hand, the cancellation should clear that flag by tomorrow, if anything was done correctly.

After lunch, I went over to Walgreens to pick up the two prescriptions that were ready. While I was standing in line waiting to pick up the prescription, I got a friendly call from my doctor's office to let me know that she had called OptumRX and the prescription there had already been canceled (so my earlier phone call seems to have done its job) and that she had spoken to the pharmacist at Walgreens, explained the situation, and that they should be able to have my Ozempic by tomorrow.

As it happens, the pharmacist on duty at Walgreens today was my baseball buddy -- that is to say, we always chat about baseball when there's a moment to do so. When he heard me in line, he went and pulled the two prescriptions that were ready and handed them to the woman who was going to be handling my pickup. While I was talking to her, we tried to get my records at Walgreens fixed up so I would start getting emails about prescriptions that needed to be refilled or renewed again. This may or may not have worked, because Walgreens computer systems may or may not work. But we'll see!

Late this afternoon, I got a call from Walgreens indicating that my Ozempic was ready. Apparently, they had an order for my dosage that was canceled and the insurance cleared, so I could have it. I went in and picked it up after work and thanked my baseball buddy for taking care of it. We then marveled at how the Braves had taken three of four from the Dodgers and were now about to lose a series to my woeful Cardinals.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that everything stays straightened out now.

And I am very thankful that I have *good* health insurance.

Because I really don't want to see *bad* health insurance. Or, at least, bad prescription coverage.