Reading for Thinkers: Life sans "Obamacare"

A snapshot of life without without "Obamacare".

(...)

Come this weekend, and one of my children tries to pick up a prescription. Said child is told that we don't seem to have any prescription-drug coverage. This comes as something of a shock as we also have a serious, chronic illness in our house that requires a number pf prescriptions for a number of drugs. So, on Tuesday, I begin scaling phone trees to try and figure out what in the hell was going on in my life. I call my spiffy new health-care company to ask them. Many buttons to push. Many automated voices with which to chat. Ten minutes or so on hold. Finally, a purportedly live person tells me that my prescription benefits are being handled by... another company. I call Company No. 2. Many buttons to push. Still more automated voices with whom to chat. Another 10 minutes on hold. Another purportedly live person tells me that "there doesn't seem to be any record of you in our system." It is suggested that I call my former employer.

As it happens, I know the guy who handles this stuff there, so I get through to him with a minimum of fuss and bother. (At this point, I feel like throwing him a parade.) He tells me to call my former employer's parent company — at its "Shared Services Center" — to find out what's what's happening with my life. Many buttons to push. Many automated voices with whom to chat. Ten minutes or so on hold. Finally, a purportedly live person tells me that she doesn't know what's going on, but that she will get in touch with the company who's handling the health-insurance handling between former employer and spiffy new health-care provider and see "what could have fallen through the cracks." I, myself, have fallen through the cracks into hell.

A bit later, the Shared Services Center calls me back and tells me all is well. I can now go pick up my prescriptions, as long as I take along this piece of paper with several long numbers on it, which are my various codes that I need to confirm my coverage. These look like the numbers I would need to launch a pre-emptive ICBM strike on Kamchatka. Off I go back to the pharmacy. I spend 25 minutes waiting with my thumb in my ear while the nice pharmacist lady calls Company No. 2 which, for the benefit of readers who may have joined us late, is the company that handles my prescription drug benefits for my spiffy new health-insurance company, the one that did so poorly with the hospital executives in that survey. I watch the nice pharmacist lady. Many buttons to push. Many automated voices with which to chat. Finally, she seems to be talking to a purportedly live person.
"Oh?" she saysinto the phone. "That seems high for a co-pay."

Ruh-roh.

We now must take a brief detour into the fabulous world of our nation's major pharmaceutical companies. As I mentioned, we have a serious chronic illness in our house that requires many prescriptions for many drugs. The nice pharmacist lady informs me that my co-pay for one of these drugs has gone from $25 to $600 a month because the "drug is not a preferred one." At this point, I am seriously thinking of leaping the counter and gulping as many serious narcotics as I can before they subdue me.

As it happens, and as it was explained to me by my wife, who is professionally expert in these matters both by vocation and by education, the patent for one of said drugs is due to expire. This would enable the manufacture of generic forms of the drug which, theoretically, would be cheaper. So what the company does is jigger with the formula a bit, rename it clumsily, and then re-establish the patent on the "new" form of the drug. (Drug companies also have been accused of buying off the makers of generic drugs.) At which point, the drug under its old name becomes "not preferred." Zoom go the co-pays.

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Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 1/18/2012
What the GOP's "Market-Based" Health Care Looks Like 

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Read more about the above pharmaceutical patent document practices that have resulted in antitrust action here.