Express Scripts Deja Vu

I have decided to start a new post on Express Scripts.  My previous posts on this subject are all contained in my post on Health Care, which you should click on if you want the full detailed history.

In summary, what has transpired to date is that we used to be covered by Empire Blue Cross, which, in turn used an in-house pharmacy called NEXT Rx for mail-order fulfillment.  Empire was owned by Wellpoint.  In their infinite wisdom, Wellpoint decided to sell NEXT Rx to Express Scripts and enter into a ten year pharmaceutical mail order fulfillment agreement with Express Scripts.  What then transpired can best be described as chaos.  My previous blog post gives the blow by blow description of that interaction.  Finally, in an act of desperation, I wrote a letter to Angela Braly, the then CEO of Wellpoint.  As a consequence of that one letter I was assigned the aid of a person in her office to assist me with the mail order fulfillment needs that we had.  This, in effect, meant that the CEO's office at Wellpoint was micro managing the mail order fulfillment of my mail order prescriptions for almost every refill.  This was necessary due to the incompetence, or negligence of Express Scripts.

In the end I gave up on Empire Blue Cross, primarily due to the dangers associated with the prescription fulfillment of Express Scripts and also the tremendous difficulty and time constraints to actually completing this routine task on a regular and repeating basis. The only gratitude I got was an admission by the assistant to the CEO of Wellpoint that all of my claims of incompetence or outright greed on the part of Express Scripts were true.

Shortly thereafter, Angela Braly was relieved of her duties at Wellpoint. Some people think that it was due to her gross incompetence.

I changed to United HealthCare for our medical insurance coverage, and almost simultaneously, United decided to use Express Scripts as their prescription fulfillment agent. So, I am now back in exactly the same position I was before I switched.  Actually worse, because I do not have a concierge to manage my relationship with Express Scripts like I did when I was with Wellpoint.

Stay tuned for new and exciting incidents in health care mismanagement from Express Scripts.