Wednesday, June 20, 2007

1,623 Dollars


I guess the oncology pharmacist must have gotten out of the wrong side of bed this morning. First she forgot to get Dave's chemo ready, leaving him sitting in the infusion chair, with an IV running, for over an hour before the nurse was able to start the infusions (which took another hour and a half.) Then, when the nurse told me to go to the pharmacy to get his Procrit (the Erythropoietin mentioned yesterday) the pharmacist was incredibly rude; first pointedly ignoring me, then emphasizing the fact that this drug cost $1,623, so I "should be grateful" that Dave's insurance covers most of it. She circled the $1,623 on the receipt, then tapped it twice with her pen before charging me $25 for the drug, plus $3.55 for the syringes to inject it. She was too cheap to give me a few alcohol swabs. Do I feel grateful? I haven't decided yet. So far, they're charging us $200 to $300 per month for various co-pay expenses. Nevermind the thousands of dollars they've already collected in monthly premiums over the last TWELVE years.

I'll be giving Dave these injections at home, and the nurse supervised me giving him his first injection after his infusion was done. Then we went to lunch.

That's Dave, above, after I handed him the pharmacy bag and told him what it cost.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a bummer! Your husband has cancer, his insurance has been paid for over and over again and the woman at the hospital is having a diva moment. You are a lot nicer than I would be under the circumstances but if it happens again, tell her (or him) that you are not responsible for the obscene markup charged by pharmaceutical companies!

Nancy

Anonymous said...

Remind me to tell you and Dave the story of the guy who was being hounded by RK Davies over an "unpaid bill"....
hugs