It’s been approximately 15 months since the last time that I was able to go to my mailbox and pick up a 90 day supply of insulin from the insurance company, and damn it feels good. It felt great yesterday to call the insurance company and set up my mail order account with OptumRX, which this is my first time dealing with them, I’ve previously dealt with Medco with United Healthcare.
The customer service rep answered all the questions that I had about my new insurance and the costs and it was a very simple process to set up my account and get my first order submitted. Called the doctor and had them fax a prescription which I figured would take several days for it to be input into the computer and then another day for the order to process. That was not the case. I called my doctor around 10 a.m. and I received an email last night around 7 p.m. that my order was processed and had a tracking number. That tracking number showed that the package was already picked up and headed my way to south Florida.
The insulin pricing was a bit different then previous insurances that I used in the past. And insulin in a vial vs insulin pens were different as well. For example, the Humalog insulin vials were a tier 1, but the Humalog insulin pens were a tier 2. The Novolog vials were tier 2 and so were the insulin pens, but the insulin pen refills were tier 3. Apidra of course was a tier 3.
Just for my own curiosity, is Apidra NOT a tier 3 for any of your insurances?
Going from what I was paying out of pocket for insulin, which could have been a lot more if it wasn’t for some of the awesome people in the DOC, to only having to pay $25 for a 90 day supply, I cannot find words for the way it feels.
Next up is test strips. All of the supplies are covered under my medical and not pharmacy, so that’s a whole other story. The new year for insurance starts in November, so why waste money on a deductible now, when it will just need to be re-paid again in a month and a half. But that also means I have to stretch out the life of the current strips that I have.
No matter what, I will never complain about an insurance issue, the costs of supplies or a deductible or anything! I hope that I can eventually help others as much as people helped me get through this tough time.
***Update*** I wrote this post before I opened up the package. I received the package and went to Starbucks to write this post. Upon opening the box when I got home, the package contained 3 vials of Humulin N. I use 5 vials of Humalog a month, and have never used Humulin, so this is a big mistake. Then I remembered that during my last appointment two weeks ago, I spoke with my doctor about possibly using 10 units a night of Humulin to help with the morning highs and that’s where the confusion may have came in. So, although the pharmacy did not make a mistake and I have been billed for the $25 for the insulin that I will never use, I can’t really complain about them.