Episode: 3516
Title: HPR3516: Rant about RX
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3516/hpr3516.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 00:51:11

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3516 for Monday the 24th of January 2022.
Today's show is entitled, rant about RX and is part of the series, Hells and Hellscare.
It is hosted by Operator, and is about 22 minutes long, and car is an explicit flag.
So, this is a rant mostly about prescriptions on Hellscare.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Haka Public Radio, the host Operator.
Today is going to be more of a rant slash, um, thing about prescriptions in healthcare or whatever.
My experience, I'm on, you know, prescriptions, a couple of prescriptions, one of the controlled
substance, and I'm just going to voice my extreme distaste for the whole process and people involved
and what they can and can't do, and it's kind of a call to if anyone can help me understand the
process or help me get through this or help me do it better. I made HD, and I'm trying to feel
my prescriptions. I had to graduate my doctor, they'll only give me one, two, maybe three slips if
I'm lucky, and then of course, you know, I won't fill them, and then I go to fill them, and I'm late,
and you know, I haven't filled it all out, and it's been less than 30 days, and they say they can't
fill the prescription, and I go to a store, and one store wants to charge me, you know, originally,
I was paying $170 or something ridiculous, $120 for, uh, through my insurance.
And, you know, even the other insurance plans will do things like, oh, well, you have to use
Walgreens or you have to use CVS, or they'll say, okay, well, we'll let you fill two prescriptions
at CVS, but if it's not a controlled substance or whatever the other thing is, we're going to make
you do the mail-in bullshit. And, you know, I don't have a problem with any of the whole, I don't
have a problem with any of the hoops and the loops and whatever, but when I change jobs, every five
years, or what's even worse is that I'm working somewhere, and they change their insurance, and I'm
forced to change and get a new insurance card and get a new insurance number, and these guys, you
know, you know, I'm from the health insurance side, they keep the same numbers, and you go there,
and you get blood work, or whatever it is, and they keep the same numbers, and they ship that over,
and then you get these nasty grams and emails, or whatever it is, you get, you get a bill in the
mail that says, you owe, you know, $778, because, you know, they're using an old code, or they got
your name wrong, or they fat-finger something, and guess what? It's a computer talking to a computer,
the talks to a computer, it calls to another computer, and they all, nothing, nobody actually does
anything, nobody actually checks their work, nobody takes responsibility for checking these things,
or whatever, they just kind of ship, throw shit over the fence, and wait for it to, to, to stick,
and, you know, I, I had the tendency, and I started this 15, 20 years ago, when I get a bill,
for health care in the mail, I will ignore it, and if I get another one, I will ignore that one,
and after the third one, I may or may not, depending on how much money it is, and depending on how,
how BS I think the bill is, I may or may not ignore that one, but usually after about the fourth
one, or the third one, I'm calling someone and saying, hey, you know, this is bullshit, I'm not
paying for this, I have insurance, whatever, do whatever you got to do to figure it out. Oh, well,
you know, your insurance company said this, and of course you call the insurance company,
and the insurance company says, oh, well, you got to call the, you know, the provider,
and they messed up a six, and put a four instead of six, and they have to call less.
Well, what I like to do is, which is working less and less, as things are all automated,
and nobody wants to talk to you, what I would do is I would say, okay, hold on, just one moment,
I'm going to bridge in the other side of the equation, and y'all, I will put you on mute,
record the conversation, because Georgia is a single party consent state, and whether or not
the other side's single party or not, I observe that, and if I hear that, you know, that their,
you know, call may record it, whatever, if they don't state that they're a single party,
then I just assume that they're, or they're not a single party, that that's assumed they're
single party, if they haven't stated that in their, in their messages, then I'll say, you know,
if you're comfortable, you know, I'm recording this program, this, this conversation,
and I will, I will have them conferencing with each other, and figure out whatever they need to figure
out, and just be belligerent about it, and just say, I'm not paying this, I can't pay this,
I don't have the money, and they will eventually, you know, whittle it down to a reasonable number.
If you just pay the bill, they will, they will hit you over the head. You can, you can pay $300
$50 bill, or $20 bill, or even you're not even supposed to pay anything. They are, you know,
we all know the healthcare system is messed up, but here's some techniques that you can do
to help get around that as far as the healthcare and getting bills, and people screwing stuff up,
and whatever, and you got these HSA accounts, and I can't ever remember to bring the card,
and I can't remember the pen, and I have to look it up, and then they want my signature,
and then they want me to scan the card, and then they want me to verify information,
and then I do all this stuff, and they're like, oh, we can't fill your prescription,
because you can't fill it till tomorrow. Okay, that's fine, I get it, it's a controlled substance,
whatever, but it's a day, and I've never had any history of abusing the system. I've been whatever,
I don't have, you know, a criminal history in my background, my identity has not been stolen,
and if, if, from that standpoint, if you were to put a chip in me and say that that was a
secure way to identify myself, or even if it wasn't, I wouldn't even give a shit. Like, the,
I would say, if you could do like a single identity, that I could just walk around with, like,
a minority report, and get my prescriptions, and not have to jump through hoops, and go to
three different places, and get it filled, and pay too much money for that, and go over here,
and, you know, do this crap, then I would do it. I would give away every piece of personal
information that I have, if I could just go to the store, or have somebody, okay, I'd get it,
you can't put controlled substance in the mail, sure, I'll go to the store and pick it up, fine.
But, from that standpoint, I said to be able to go to the store and pick up my prescription,
30 days early, a month early, two months early, a week early, whatever, because, you know, if you
have a problem with remembering things, and the doctor only gives you the prescription of
exactly the amount of pills you need, guess what, if there's any delay in that process,
you're going to three different places, try to fill a prescription, and you're waiting in line,
and then they tell you, oh, we don't have that, or oh, you know, it's going to be double what you pay,
and I played $170, $150, once, and then I went back, and I was like, something's wrong, this is
not, can't be right, and I eventually figured out a way to whatever, and then I eventually found
good RX, and I started paying, what, Kruger, and Costco had the same drug, through good RX,
which is basically a fucking coupons from 1990, I mean, even before 1990, whenever they started
coupons, it's basically a bunch of coupons that, you know, give you discounts on medication,
and I don't know where this money comes from, or who eats the cost with it, I don't know if it's
the pharmacies, or, you know, the drug end of it, or whatever, but, you know, having to pay,
even with insurance, $120 for generic drug, and then being able to look it up on good RX,
and pay like, it was like $14 or $63, or something like that, that's just ridiculous, that's insane,
like, that's insane, so I didn't know about good RX, somebody told me about it several years ago,
and that's what I've been using, and I would suggest that, and I know I'm still ranting,
I'm trying to not, trying to provide value here, but good RX is a good place to start,
you know, what I can say, as far as filling prescriptions, is, you know, if you can wait,
wait, wait for the prescription, because what happens with me is I'll get there, and they'll be like,
oh, well, it's, you know, you can't fill this out till tomorrow, they're in a big rush,
there's 15,000 people trying to get vaccination, this is January 7th or whatever,
or January 3rd or 4th, I don't even know what day it is, because I have ADHD, and I've been driving
around all, effing day trying to fill my prescription for the pills that will help me remember what day it is,
so I don't know what day it is, I think it's the 4th, but anyways, you know, everybody's running around,
trying to get COVID test, so all the pharmacies, pharmacies are running around in circles,
half doing their jobs, which is, that's, that's what happens, that's what has to happen,
sure, whatever, but at the end of the day, you know, I woke up this morning, I went to go fill my
prescription, was it yesterday, actually yesterday, I went to fill prescription and Kruger,
they said, no, this was last, this is earlier this week, so come Monday, I said, oh, I gotta fill my
prescription on, get my prescription, make sure I get them, I have several in the queue, I have two
extra of the control substances, just because I can't ever, you know, drive to the doctor,
get the, call the doctor, remember to call the doctor, remember to go pick up the prescription,
remember to drive to the right place, to fill the prescription, and then remember to drive
back to the right place, when the prescription is filled, and then nothing evil or bad,
or whatever happens in between, that's fine, usually I don't have a problem with the doctor,
but guess what, my doctor's closed on Wednesdays, and Saturdays and Sundays, and they're closed
from 1 p.m. to, what, up 12 to 130 p.m. or whatever, and I swear to God, every time I call my doctor,
their answering machine goes off, or it's Wednesday, or it's, you know, after a certain amount of
time, or after six, or whatever, and I swear every time I go to call, it's like a bunch time,
and they're closed, and then I'm like, oh, I don't even remember to call them again, and I don't,
because they're, they're, I forget, so, you know, I tried to set alarms, I tried to set
timers, and I moved things around, I tried to fill my prescription last week at Kroger,
for, like, for the Adderall, and I, and the Gavipenson, I think, I did those both like Monday,
while she says, oh, you know, we can't do this, we can't give your Adderall till Friday, well,
I don't actually need it, I have, you know, a probably 30 in the queue, but, you know,
sometimes I go months without remembering to do fill my prescription, and it's not a routine,
because it's random, so anyways, I had enough in there, I said, yeah, I can wait till Friday,
whatever, and then I thought about it, and I'm like, you know what, you know, that's, that's not
out of time, I need to go pick it up, you know, I'm gonna go pick up the Gavipenson anyways,
I'm gonna be in there for that, let me, you know, just pull this prescription, and whatever,
actually, no, I was doing the Adderall, and then I went to go back to Kroger to fill the Gavipenson,
and I said, while I'm filling the Gavipenson, I'll pull the Adderall and fill it across the street,
at the Walgreens, well, come to find out, the Walgreens charge double, and not only did they take
me up prescription, when I went down there, and stood in line for three minutes, or more, finally,
when they reached me, they said, oh, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
oh, okay, well, we can't fill this until tomorrow, well, that's great, I'm glad I drove all the way to
here, you know, to try to fill this prescription for you to say you can't fill it, and I spent an
entire day expecting that you're going to have my prescription ready, and you don't. Now, who's
fault that is? I don't really care, that's not my problem, but that needs to be fixed, and the whole
controlled substance and thing needs to be fixed. I should be able to go to the store and get my
prescription, and I shouldn't have to drive to three different places to try to fill my prescription
in a day. I shouldn't have to wait for my prescription, I should be able to just go to the store,
and pick it up, I shouldn't have to physically drop it off, it should be digitally signed, and sent
from my doctor to Kroger in a secure manner, I could drop it, I could lose it, I could make a
photocopy of it, and maybe I do, maybe I will, maybe I'll get a printer that does nothing, but
photocopies prescription, so I can just copy my prescriptions and write whatever prescriptions I want,
so that I can actually don't have to drive all the way to the doctor, so I mean, I honestly
feel like making my own method at this point, you know, so I don't have to go to the doctor, and I
don't have to go through this red tape of filling out and getting crap, and then being disappointed
every time I talk to a pharmacist. Anyways, good Rx call before, if you can, you know, call before
see if they have it in stock, and you know, they're not going to talk to you unless, you know, you have
insurance, or if you fill the prescription without the actual prescription, they're not going to
tell you anything, they can't tell you anything, and these pharmacists bless their hearts, you know,
most of them are women, you know, I don't, I don't want to make any comments about that or
sexist comments or anything, but most of them women bless their hearts, I block flowers for the
the croger that I'm out now, but I kind of lost my temper at the Walgreens because, you know, it was
just like, oh, we can't fill this till tomorrow. It's like, well, that's great. I wish someone would
have told me that before I, you know, spent the entire day thinking I was going to get my prescription
filled. So here it is, you know, I go to croger, I get the adder off, fill the adder off, they say,
they can't get it till Friday, I say, well, I need gabapentin. So I go to croger to do the gabapentin,
I pull the adder off prescription, pick it across the street, fill it there. Oh crap, it's twice
as much, it's $52 instead of $12 at whatever it is at Walgreens. So, and then not on top of that,
they tell me that it's not even ready. I was willing to pay the extra money for the gabapentin,
whatever it was at Walgreens, adder off Walgreens because I was just going to be done with it and
have to pay an extra $25 just for convenience. But she says you can't fill it till the rest. So I
pull that. So now I'm sitting here going to croger twice. I've gone to croger twice. I haven't
gone to the doctor to pick up my new prescription, which is going to be for next month. And I went
across the street to Walgreens twice now to fill it. So I've gone here now to the pharmacy four times
today and I have one prescription. And within this week, I've gone to the pharmacy five times
and I have one prescription to show for it. Now this is all my fault. I get it whatever. But for
somebody that has issues remembering things and being cast-oriented, I need help. I need something,
I need maybe there's some kind of thing I can fill out that will make me opt-in,
opt-able, opt- whatever, my digital thing that could send over. I don't know. Maybe there's
something you guys know about that I can use or utilize to make this process easier. Questions
I can ask. Now I know, for example, this gabapentin ends if the prescription ends in like a 49 or
nine. It's not a controlled substance, but it's one that they're kind of about. So for example,
gabapentin ends in a 49. And that means that whatever that code is, I don't even know if there's
a thing online, but I was told by the pharmacist and I probably should look this up that if it like
ends in a nine or 49, whatever, that it's not a controlled substance, but it's they won't give you
like three months' worth of of whatever for it. So that's one thing you remember. Now the Adderall,
which I obviously don't have because it didn't get filled, it has a different number on it. It's
like an eight or something. And if it ends in that, then you know that it's a controlled substance
and you have to have, you know, all the bells and whistles and you got to have the the piece of
paper with the anti-whatever. I mean, it's like it's like it's like going to the store with a
$50,000 bond to fill a prescription. Like I feel like when I'm getting my Adderall, I feel like
I'm caching a $50,000 check. That's how insane this process is. And you know, I can, I can,
I can sit on a network and sniff traffic and grab somebody's bank credentials at a, at a Starbucks
in about eight minutes and, and, and, you know, transfer money to myself and, you know, move to
Buswine in eight minutes. And I don't need anything but a computer. But yet, if I want to fill my
prescription with no history of any bad things, no, no history of identity theft, no, you know,
anomalies and prescription, whatever, I have to go one through 16 loops and circles and whatever.
And, and, you know, it's just, I'm ranting about that. The other thing is it, what else, what
what else am I saying? Uh, the other piece of information I'll say is if you can go without
having your medication that you need for like a week, uh, or the longer you can go without
having it, if it controls substance, the better. So if you can go a week, two weeks,
that you, you, you ideally want to have at least two weeks of whatever prescription you need to
take, uh, to, to have a buffer room because sometimes, you know, I, like I said, I forget.
I don't remember. I'll fill up the prescription and then I'll, you know, forget that it's there
or whatever. Uh, and I feel like, you know, I need at least two weeks if not more. And sometimes
even then I'll be like, oh, I got, you know, I got four pills left. I need to make sure. And,
of course, I forget and I forget and I forget and then I don't go to the thing and then I do
this and this happens and whatever and I change insurance and it's just like,
but the prescription thing, I'm just using good Rx. I don't have anything to do with
prescriptions with my, with my health insurance now. But, you know, when you're working with an
employer and you're, you change jobs every five years or your employer changes their, you know,
health care system every five years. It seemed like you're recently, I've had, you know, uh,
three different IT jobs within the past 10 years and one, if not two of them, both have changed
their insurance slightly. So when you, this year for, for, for example, when I changed,
when they changed stuff on our back in our choices were from, you know, we had four choices of
health care, uh, different, uh, premiums to like two or three or something stupid. It was like,
it was, it was the choices and the amount of flexibility we had with our plan was, you know,
debons are really reduced and it's pretty much the worth health care that I think I've had since,
since, you know, the past 20 years at my employers, um, you know, in, in, I didn't do the research,
my wife did and she says, you know, these plans suck. Like you're paying the crap tonne for
insurance. You weren't paying that much at, you know, some of the other previous employers,
this is kind of BS and, you know, she's been getting stuff done. We're getting older. We're
having other things that we have to do and pay for. And this health insurance thing is starting to
be annoying. And when our kids, kids get older, I, I hope to God that there's something that, you
know, whatever socialized medicine, whatever we got to call it, however we figure this out,
we need to just figure it out and, and, and get it, get it sorted out because like this is,
this is insane. Like I don't, this is not a viable way to run health care.
Anyways, being as polite as you can to your pharmacist, it's not there fault. It's, you know,
it's, they're only doing what they can. They're doing the jobs. It's the health care in the
insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies that are making your life a living hell
and people, the 0.001 percent that take advantage of, you know, filling prescriptions and
controlled substance and whatever, you as the customer have to go through all these loops and
all this red tape because, you know, of the some crackhead at some point at some time did
something he wasn't supposed to do and somebody died. That's not my problem. If I don't have a
history of, you know, having any kind of, you know, issues or controlled substances,
use or whatever and it parallels to everything else. That's my biggest beef with everything
red tape today is that I have no history of doing anything wrong. So unless my identity is stolen,
you should just give me what I need to have. I shouldn't have to, once you've authenticated me
and you've identified me as the person as who I say I am, you just need to give me the
service that you would give a normal person and not make them dump through to 15 hoops and
provide 15 different things and provide this information and provide that information and, you know,
it's, it makes, it doesn't make sense to make your customers run through all these hoops despite
health care, but just in retail and whatever in general through a process to run through all these
hoops to get what you pay for because, you know, the 2.001 percent of people abuse the system,
everyone has to get punished. And it's just like, it's getting worse and worse and worse. And then
when you finally do get the thing that you ever so hopefully think that you've got the right thing,
but then you do get the thing that you went through all these hoops to get, well, guess what,
it turns out it's the wrong thing and not only is it the wrong thing, you know, you might have paid
too much for it. Or, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's expired or whatever it is. Like,
there's so many things that just need to be fixed in that regard. And I mean, I don't even know
what I'm saying or I'm just ranting and I hope maybe this helps somebody or helps understand
that puts them on another level playing field. So we're all suffering with this together.
If it's just me, then it's just me, but I feel like everybody's suffering through the same madness.
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