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In addition to this: my insurance prescription plan *requires* me to use mail order from a single provider in order to have my meds covered. I can only fill a new prescription at a pharmacy twice before having to mail order them or insurance will not pay. https://twitter.com/DrRobDavidson/status/1294620591081893891
I get around this because the only name brand medication I take is schedule II, so technically it's a new prescription every month, and everything else I take is both generic and cheap enough to pay out of pocket for, bypassing insurance entirely.
Millions of other people aren't as lucky: if their employer provided health plan has chosen to use CVS/Caremark as a pharmacy benefits manager, and their maintenance medication isn't scheduled or they can't afford the OOP cost, they have no other alternatives.
Some (not all) CVS/Caremark PBM plans let you fill at a CVS pharmacy instead of mail order, but if you do, you can only get a partial fill, 30 days, no matter how many months the scrip is for, and you forfeit the rest of the prescription + all refills.
If your doctor won't refill your medication without a visit, that means your once a year visit for a 90 day prescription with 4 refills is now an every 30 days visit. People with scheduled drug prescriptions can tell you how massively inconvenient that is.
Rural residents without a local CVS, or people whose local CVS is terrible (mine has shorted me scheduled pills on 3 separate occasions with no recourse), don't even have that terrible option: it's mail order or out of pocket only.
I see people suggesting that those affected by the USPS sabotage fill their prescriptions at a local pharmacy, but because of the vertical monopoly most PBM programs have, that's a much bigger decision than it seems like it should be.
Please don't advise people to fill prescriptions locally instead of mail order without checking their pharmaceutical coverage and what will happen if they do. You may be completely fucking them over.
(My feelings about the vertical monopoly of drug coverage and how retail pharmacies should not be allowed to own PBM companies at all, much less mandate the use of a single provider, can be taken as a rather profane given.)
