Consumerist
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swine flu
You Can Make Your Own Liquid Tamiflu At Home
G.'s young son was recently ill with H1N1, but no pharmacy in the city where he lives had liquid Tamiflu in stock. (Even the federal government released its stockpile not long ago.) He writes that nearly every pharmacy he called turned him down. Then he learned that the liquid can be made from Tamiflu capsules by pharmacists, or even by parents at home. Why didn't the pharmacy staff, or his doctor, tell him this? More » -
readyfill
CVS Will Automatically Refill Your Prescription, Consent Be Damned
CVS pharmacies apparently don't need consent to enroll customers in ReadyFill, a program that signs customers up for the maximum allowable number of prescription refills and then robocalls them when their drugs are ready. According to a veteran pharmacist, the automatic enrollments began after CVS' corporate office set specific performance targets that would affect bonuses for managers and pharmacists. Inside, the pharmacist tells us what ReadyFill is, how it works, and how to escape those annoying robocalls... More » -
rite aid
$500,000 In Consumer Refunds From Rite Aid After False Cold Remedy Advertising Suit
Remember the class-action lawsuit against the makers of cold-and-flu-preventing magic potion Airborne? Airborne claimed that it could prevent or shorten colds and flus, without any actual scientific evidence to back those claims up. More » -
followup
Sam's Club Apologizes For Candy-In-Prescription-Bottles Promo
Sam's Club has put an end to their recent pharmacy campaign and apologized for confusing pills with candy. After Joe at Salisbury News, who received the giant pill bottle filled with sweets, wrote to complain, they sent him a response in which they said it was an isolated incident and won't be repeated elsewhere:
We have also shared with all of our pharmacy departments that this is an unacceptable practice and should not be repeated. At Sam's Club we always have the health and welfare of our customers and members in mind with everything we do and we deeply regret that this incident occurred.
You can read the full response over at Salisbury News.
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your drugs are ready
"Why Is CVS Automatically Refilling My Prescriptions?"
Bill wants to know why CVS interprets a prescription with refills as a prescription that should definitely be refilled.
More »It took three calls from CVS' automated reminder service for me to realize what was going on: CVS Pharmacy was refilling our prescriptions without our asking for them to be refilled, and then their automated dialer was calling us to notify us that we had a prescription waiting. Nobody in my family requested to have a prescription refilled, yet three times CVS called us to tell us to come and pick up our prescription.
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insurance
CVS Can't Get Its Billing Straight, Tells Patient He Has To Pay For His Own Kidney Transplant Meds
Chris has to take the immunosuppressant drug Prograf because of a kidney transplant, and it costs nearly $300 for a one month supply. Yesterday, he found out that someone at CVS corporate has instructed his local pharmacist to start billing him directly, apparently because his secondary insurer hasn't been paying for nearly two years. More » -
expiration dates
Will CVS Ever Pull Expired Medicine, Baby Formula From Their Shelves?
CVS stores across the nation regularly stock expired medicine, milk, and baby formula, according to a damning union report. This isn't the first time CVS has been caught stocking dangerous goods. Last year, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo threatened a suit after his office caught the pharmacy selling goods over a year past their expiration dates. CVS claims that, despite investing over $160 million in a "perpetual inventory management" system, it's nearly impossible to keep expired items off the shelf because they simply have too much stuff. More » -
health insurance
Ask The Consumerists: Should Everyone Take Advantage Of $4 Generics?
Back in April, reader B. e-mailed the Consumerist tipline about a change to his health insurance plan's prescription drug schedule. It raised a drug that he's taken for years, the generic version of Prozac, to a different schedule—more than tripling B.'s co-pay, from $8 to $25. More » -
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prescriptions
Costco Fixes Customer's Botched Electronic Prescription
If you get your prescriptions filled electronically, always double-check the dosage. Kimberly's prescription was recently screwed up somewhere between the physician filling out the order online and Costco's pharmacist receiving it. Luckily for her, the Costco pharmacist was incredibly helpful and fixed the problem for her, so Kimberly didn't have to waste her copay or deal with the issue on her own. He also explained, however, that the current state of electronic prescriptions is a big mess. More » -
above and beyond
Walgreens Pharmacist Sends Hand Written Thank You Note To Customer
Whether it's rational or not, there's something very satisfying when your pharmacist acknowledges you personally—it makes you feel like this expert you're placing such trust in takes the job, and you, seriously. In our experience it's a rare thing to see from pharmacists at chain drugstores, but Mike just had a great encounter with his Walgreens pharmacist when he moved to a new town. More » -
pharmacies
CVS Gave Me The Wrong Pills! Is This Common?
Reader Pattie got the wrong pills from CVS and luckily, she noticed before taking them. She has no idea what they were, but is wondering if this sort of mistake is common. More » -
hurricane ike
Stop Whining About Hurricane Ike, You're Scheduled To Work At Walgreens
A reader reports that the Walgreens he works at in Houston, Texas, where Hurricane Ike just passed through, is making him come to work, even though he has no roof. He writes More » -
cvs
CVS Employee Calls Customer A 'Fucking AIDS Freak'
Check out this stunning exchange between a Philadelphia CVS employee and a customer:
His response was "Whatever, somebody needs to come deal with this because I'm about to go off..."
"You're about to 'Go off?', I asked him."Do you really think that's the best thing to say to a paying customer?"
And at this point, with his back turned to me, the young man muttered "Fucking AIDS freak."
Read J's full story of how it got to this point, and CVS' meager response, below.
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your health
Could Generic Drugs Be Even Cheaper Without The Middle Man?
The WSJ Health Blog says that pharmacy benefit managers are marking up the amount they charge your insurance company for generic drugs and keeping the difference. Often the mark-up isn't too severe, but the WSJ has one example where the difference was over a hundred dollars. More » -
birth control
New "Pro-Life" Pharmacies Won't Sell You Birth Control
Putting their own beliefs ahead their customers', the DMC Pharmacy, scheduled to open in Chantilly, VA., is among a growing number of "pro-life" pharmacies that will not sell any form of contraception. According to the Washington Post, the pharmacy, an expansion of Divine Mercy Care, asserts a "right of conscience" which means they won't provide any services or products that they find objectionable. Details, inside... More » -
walgreens
Walgreens Pill-Flipping Scheme Costs Taxpayers Millions
Thanks to an anonymous whistle-blower, a Walgreens pill-flipping scheme has been blown wide open, according to CBS. "Pill-flipping" refers the practice of pharmacies that purposefully switch Medicaid patients to more expensive versions of certain drugs for the sole reason of collecting more money from the government. Naturally, when this happens, taxpayers pick up the bill. Athough, Walgreen's officially denies any wrongdoing they have agreed to pay the government more than $35 million. Details, inside... More » -
drugs
The Battle Of The Biggest Killer: Prescription Drugs V. Illegal Drugs
So, Florida is apparently plagued by addicted prescription-poppers and not the pot-addled deviants targeted by our government's so-called "War on Drugs." A new report shows that prescription drugs killed three-times more Floridians than illegal drugs, and not because old people can't follow doctor's orders. Addictive prescriptions like Vicodin, OxyContin, Valium and Xanax killed more users than all illegal drugs combined. More » -
prescriptions
CVS In Pennsylvania Keeps Pharmacy Supplies At Toasty 93 Degrees
A CVS in Cressona, PA has had chronic air conditioning problems "for over a year and a half now" according to the employee our tipster spoke with. Now Frank wants to know whether or not it's safe to store so much medicine in such intense heat. It certainly goes against the storage instructions for a lot of meds. More »
pharmacies
New York, 7:12 PM
Sat Nov 14
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