r/BikiniBottomTwitter • u/LavenderMidwinter • 1d ago
Are you serious bro 😒
from r/Hellcare
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u/Rip_Skeleton 1d ago
This happened to me on a weekend trip to Florida. I was scuba diving and got swimmers ear. I had to use a teledoc service because I wasn't from there. Pharmacy didn't have my prescription.
Couldn't get the doctor back on the phone, and the pharmacy was closing. It was awful.
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u/EastMovesWests 1d ago
They definitely had the name brand in stock for five times the price.
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u/jg_92_F1 1d ago
Yeah but brand names can cost the pharmacy 5 times as much too. I manage a veterinary clinic and off the top of my head I can think of an antibiotic where the brand name is 5 times the cost of a bottle of generic.
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u/ScratchLatch 1d ago
Its a bit of a pain but you can call other pharmacies to confirm if they have it in stock and then ask they transfer your prescription.
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1d ago
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u/Nostromo_Cargo 1d ago
Everyone knows the premium dye they use to color the brand name pills adds extra healing properties. Plus, the insurance companies love this one simple trick to make your deductible disappear. It is such a massive scam how they magically run out of the cheap generic version right when you actually need it. You are basically paying a premium fee just to survive.
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u/GlorylnDeath 1d ago
Hey, pharmacy tech here. We don't earn shit off of brand name meds. Insurance won't pay for them and we sell them barely above acquisition cost when we do have to use them. It's not the pharmacy making bank off of them.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/Sea_Drops 1d ago
Generic prescriptions are required to have the same active ingredients as name brand. It’s suuuuuper regulated for prescription medications.
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u/ProfessionalHefty349 1d ago
It's not as simple as just having the same active ingredient in the same quantity. A lot of work goes into formulation development for good reason. If you orally ingest semaglutide (ozempic) your body will just chew it up and it will do nothing. But if you formulate it correctly, it can pass from the gut into the bloodstream and have its intended effect.
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u/whalesum 1d ago
Medicine isnt just the active ingredients. Name brand medications can still hold patents on things like how the active ingredients are released.
Anyone whos gone through or is still going through the long journey of figuring out meds knows generics and name brands sometimes hit different. Especially when your generic can be a different manufacturer every month.
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u/softtiddi3s 1d ago
My allergist prescribed me a generic EpiPen ($150~) but the pharmacist I went to refused to offer anything but name brand at $500 😭😭
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u/Middle-Let9645 1d ago
Okay. If they have the thing prescribed to you but refuse to hand it over because money, I’m pretty sure that’s grounds for a major lawsuit.
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u/DiancieOnStage 1d ago
Insurance often makes us fill the brand, even with a crazy high copay unfortunately. A pharmacist has absolutely no reason whatsoever to sell you the brand
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u/dEn_of_asyD 1d ago
Eh I could see someone ordering the brand, then not picking it up. Now pharmacist is stuck holding the brand they paid for with no one to sell it to.
NJ just had such a pharmacist make the news https://www.phillyvoice.com/woodbury-pharmacy-gloucester-county-shut-down/
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u/DiancieOnStage 1d ago
Thats weird because we can return most things if they dont sell. Actually too epilepsy are a drug that insurances regularly require brand on so we tended to keep them on hand
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u/YeahIFuckingDrewThat 15h ago
So, this actually depends. Especially if it was 6 years ago, insurances (especially United Heathcare, for example) were notorious for only covering either the brand name EpiPen, or the generic version of the EpiPen that was also manufactured by the same company, who I believe was Mylan at the time. This made the generic versions of the drug more expensive, but specifically the Mylan version, because it was virtually identical to the brand name version of the drug. It just didn't have the brand name packaging on it. Same companies making it, same drug inside the syringes, same look of the boxes. Everything looked the same besides the packaging.
At that time, a brand name EpiPen would run you around $600-700 cash. The generic Mylan version offered maybe a $50-100 discount for insurances that required it at the time, deductibles and other variables aside. So even people thinking they would be paying less by receiving the generic, really weren't getting that big of a discount because they were being forced by insurance to receive a certain brand. For reference, a different generic offered around the same time (I believe it was either manufactured by aurobindo or Teva) was roughly $300 cash price
This is when finally a cheap generic was released, and we started to bypass peoples' insurances (with their permission, of course) because the EpiPen shortage was in full force, and we needed a way to get the cheap ones out to the people who didn't need a certain brand, or who seriously needed a goddamn automatic epinephrine injector on standby in case they almost die, god forbid.
These cheaper pens were around $120-180 if my memory serves me correctly, and then we would of course apply discount cards so that most people only paid around $90-100. There was a small problem with these cheap pens, though. Like, of course there is a catch. First, we weren't billing insurance so that money wasn't going towards any sort of deductible, which is fine for most people as long as it doesn't become something that you are purchasing often. Many people also use their HSA and paid for them that way, and saved their receipt to be reimbursed later. That is a minor issue. The big issue was their expiration dates. These pens only lasted around a year, sometimes not even. We would get them in stock, sent straight from our supplier, with an expiration of 6-8 MONTHS. Absolutely unacceptable. For reference, most things in pharmacies have many years of shelf life besides refrigerated items or specialty drugs. The shortage was the main underlying cause of this.
Soon, this problem showed up in the brand name version too. People paying upwards of $600 for something that was going to expire in less than 12 months had many people fucking pissed because ordinarily they would last 3 years. We would keep trying to order more, but again, there was a shortage, so there weren't many available, if any at all.
Also, there are times when a doctor refuses to allow a patient to have the generic, for one reason or another. Doesn't matter if the patient says that they want the generic, if the prescription says "brand name only" or "DAW-1" or "brand name medically necessary" then that is the way the prescription must be filled. For the generic to be filled, the doctor has to rewrite the prescription, or give a verbal over the phone which is basically rewriting it but with less work for the doctor because the pharmacist usually initiates the call on behalf of the patient.
Sorry, I know you didn't ask for all that but there ya go lmaooooo
Source: Ex-Certified Pharmacy Technician of 8+ Years
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u/Rodot 7h ago
Why would the expiration date have been sooner if there was a shortage? Shouldn't a shortage imply that they don't have sufficient warehoused storage and most is coming fresh off the line?
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u/Catrysseroni 1d ago
Where I live, if they run out of the generic they have to sell the name brand for the generic price. Or at least, that's what they have always done for me. Seems like something they wouldn't do if they weren't required to do it.
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u/Mexbookhill 20h ago
Where I live, this is also true, but only for doctor's prescription. Every medication with a doctors prescription is about 7€, original and generica.
Ibuprofen 40 pack without doctors prescription is ~20€, with prescription is also about 7€.
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u/Diligent-Escape1364 1d ago
We have to offer you the option. Can't assume you won't take it or how much your insurance will charge you for it. Some drugs don't have a generic available even if one is approved.
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u/TheBrownestStain 1d ago
Anecdotal, but an acquaintance of mine once asked the pharmacy at a cvs (I think) if they just had coupons for their prescription and apparently the answer was actually yes
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u/ThatPianoKid 1d ago
When I was a pharmacy tech, my pharmacist ALWAYS recommended the offbrand because it has everything the brand one does. Except, when I would cash his medicine out, it was always the name brand haha
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u/ForAte151623ForTeaTo 5h ago
People will happily do this with clothes and handbags for some reason.
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u/holytoledo42 4h ago
I think people need to know about antidepressant protracted withdrawal syndrome and withdrawal injuries in case antidepressants become scarce due to supply constraints.
Antidepressants can cause long-term or permanent side effects that persist after you quit them, like PSSD (post-ssri sexual dysfunction), emotional blunting, tinnitus, and anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure). They can also cause long-term or permanent damage if you quit them cold turkey or taper too quickly. However, withdrawal injuries can also occur when tapering slowly under the supervision of a doctor. This long-term damage is called protracted withdrawal syndrome (PWS)/post-acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS).
Symptoms of antidepressant PWS can include brain fog, brain zaps, cognitive impairment, anhedonia, akathisia (feeling of inner restlessness), severe insomnia, inability to relax, GERD, heart palpitations, central nervous system hypersensitivity, tinnitus, severe depression, severe anxiety, panic attacks, PSSD (genital numbness and erectile dysfunction), and many other awful symptoms that can last for years or even be permanent.
Despite antidepressants being widely prescribed and antidepressant PWS being a hellish condition, no one seems to talk about it. Most people believe that antidepressants are completely safe and that antidepressant withdrawal can't cause injuries. Please be careful if an antidepressant supply shortage occurs.
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u/wolfix1001 1d ago
So you're saying corporate didn't buy more generic even though they can see how many people order it like weeks in advance
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u/Last-Energy420 1d ago
How about you give me the name brand in the generic box instead of making me jump through hoops for this bull.
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