This post is a result of my wife having to re-up our insurance for the next year and the insurance company saying that costs are going up yet again.
I know everybody wants lower insurance rates. I really do. But how can a company with over 46,000 employees, as of October 2008, justify their outrageously high insurance costs? When I moved to Arizona, at my first job, my out of pocket cost for my diabetes prescriptions was $0. Yes, $0 for all of them. My premiums, which were 1/4 of the Gannett insurance amounts, covered everything fully. Now, a 90-day supply prescription for one of my insulins costs me $175 out of pocket on top of the already horrendous premiums. The other is just slightly less, and my test strips are still about half of that. This is inexcusable. A company of Gannett’s size has enough clout ,and money to spend, that it can push the insurance companies around a bit.
So I asked CVS Caremark about any payment assistance programs that they have. I was given two websites and a phone number for one of them. Note, it was a standard phone number, not a toll free one. I go to the website and it is basically just a collection of links to ACTUAL programs for payment assistance.
One of them is Lilly Cares by Eli Lilly, the maker of one of my insulins. I go to that website and go to the qualifications. One of them, which makes perfect sense, is that you must have a household income of equal to or less than 300% of the poverty line. The other, which defeats the entire purpose of the so-called assistance program, is that you cannot have ANY private or public health insurance. Wait, what!? So, basically, they’ll only help you if you’ve already been screwed or screwed up your own life already. If you’re trying to AVOID problems, you’re out of luck.
So we’re stuck paying ridiculous premiums, ridiculous copays and there’s nothing we can do about it without completely screwing ourselves for the foreseeable future.
Gee, thanks for nothing.
Whoever is running the insurance plans at Gannett isn’t doing their due diligence to help their employees.