But people have some sort of weird expectations that we know EVERYTHING... case in point:
A lady refuses to pick up her Lialda prescription. Her Medicare plan wants her to pay $400+ for it. She's very upset and asks the usual questions:
Why is my co-pay different than last month?
When does Lialda go generic?
What do you mean I probably have a deductible? I don't have a deductible.
Why hasn't Lialda gone generic yet?
How much will it be next month?
She steps away from the counter to call her husband. She returns and says...
"My husband is a CPA and he says YOU should know how much my co-pay will be next month."
So there you go, folks. If you have a question about anything pharmaceutical, ask your CPA.
They'll be able to tell you everything that they think a pharmacist is supposed to know.
4 comments:
While I know you aren't psychic, as someone who takes Pentasa, do you have any industry knowledge about why there are no generics of mesalamines? I thought Lialda was coming out because Asacol was going to have a generic soon and the drug companies needed a newer "better" brand name to push. Doesn't seem to be the case. There are a ton of people with IBD so I think the market is there. Why no interest generic drug companies?
I think you missed the point.
@ Anonymous: I got the point. Her crazy CPA husband said the pharmacist should know what her ever changing copay is. That is bananas, yes.
I then took the opportunity to ask Crazy if he happened to have any thoughts on why there hasn't been a mesalamine generic. Maybe I'm the Crazy one but in my industry we get newsletters and there is gossip and conjecture on all kinds of industry stuff. Why a whole large class of drugs has never had a generic is something we would be talking about. I completely understand it was not the point of his post. It made me think of the question though and I wanted to ask.
If his point is the pharmacists have no gossip, no conjecture, no industry knowledge on when, where, why and how pharmaceuticals are manufactured then yes, I did miss the point. I understood that he doesn't KNOW when one will come out but I thought he might know WHY it has been treated differently than all other meds.
Perhaps because it has a local effect instead of systemic, it would be difficult to do a bioavailability study. Just a guess.
My customers call their Medicaid HMO customer service desks until they find someone who will tell them what they want. Then the customer service tech knows everything.
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