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.
health
Buy The Right Sunscreen And Avoid Sunburn
By 5.31.09
Buying the right sunscreen could mean the difference between a pleasant day at the beach and a nightmare of splotchy pain. Consumer Reports conducted a poll to see how you people use sunscreen, and even dunked a bunch of volunteers in a tub for forty minutes to see how different sunscreens held up. Inside, the sunscreens that earned Consumer Reports’ praise, and a few tips for avoiding the dreaded summer sunburn.
CVS Can't Get Its Billing Straight, Tells Patient He Has To Pay For His Own Kidney Transplant Meds
By 5.27.09
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.
Menu Labeling Controversy Reaches Congress
By 5.17.09
California and New York City already require chains to display calorie counts alongside menu items, but if two Members of Congress have their way, menu labeling legislation will soon apply to chains and fast food restaurants throughout the nation. The Menu Education and Labeling (MEAL) Act introduced by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) would go even farther than existing state and local regulations by requiring chains to disclose fat, carbohydrate and salt content on their printed menus. The food industry, of course, is supporting a more palatable bill with an equally snappy acronym…
Rewind: The Culture That Brought Crunch To Bankruptcy
By 5.15.09
Just read these headlines our some Crunch gym posts from our archives. Not surprising that their new owners say Bally’s, who themselves settled with the SEC for understating losses, lied to them at the time of the sale about how many members they had.
Balance Sheets Flabby, Crunch Gym Files For Bankruptcy
By 5.15.09
Crunch gym filed for bankruptcy last week. Guess that strategy of signing up your members for long contracts, then making it really hard to cancel a membership and continuing to debit people’s bank accounts even after they were supposed to be canceled and generally being total jerks about any member that tried to stop giving them money, even if they moved away or the gym itself closed down…yeah guess that didn’t work out.
Massachusetts Fast Food Chains Must Now Display Calorie Counts
By 5.14.09
Massachusetts has approved a new regulation to list calorie counts at fast food eateries and other chain restaurants throughout the state.
Red Lobster Finally Makes Nutritional Info Available
By 5.8.09
Last May, we reviewed which fast food and chain restaurant websites were sharing nutritional information with customers and which ones weren’t. Red Lobster has always been stingy about nutritional info, so we’re happy to report that they’ve finally changed their ways and now offer an online and downloadable nutrition guide. The only thing we can’t figure out is how their “1 1/4 lb” steamed lobster is only 45 calories—that works out to about 1.5 ounces of actual lobster. (Thanks to zlionsfan!)
Monitor Swine Flu With Zero Media Hype
By 5.6.09
Trancy.net is a news aggregator that keeps track of the swine flu but removes all the media hype, leaving just the data. The best-part are the auto-updating graphs fed with WHO (World Health Organization) data showing confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, and number of countries reporting confirmed cases.
The Truth Behind Healthy Supermarket Foods
By 5.6.09
The Wall Street Journal takes a good look at items marketed as “healthier for you” on supermarket shelves, and as you can probably imagine, any actual health benefits vary greatly from product to product. Take all natural chicken, for example: if you buy “enhanced” or “plumped” chicken—it will say somewhere on the label that water, salt, and/or carrageenan has been added, but it will still be labeled natural—the sodium per 4 oz serving jumps from 45-60 mgs to 200-400 mgs.
Should You Detox Your Colon?
By 5.5.09
Is your colon all gummed up with old food that you can’t seem to get rid of? Well, if you think it is—probably because some advertisement told you so—there are plenty of colon detox products on the market. In the June print issue (and online), Consumer Reports looks at the possible health benefits of colon detoxing and determines that it’s not necessary, mainly because waste doesn’t build up in the intestine in a way that would require some sort of flushing in the first place.
Convert Your Favorite Snack Into Sugar Cubes
By 5.5.09
This website displays photos of soft drinks, smoothies, candy, and even vegetables next to little piles of sugar cubes that represent the total sugar in them. This is a great service, because if you ever go into space you can simply use this site to pack a baggie full of an equivalent amount of cubes. Then you can enjoy your Space McFlurry without worrying about liquid contamination of the spacecraft.
Swine Flu Fanatics Kick Man With Sniffles Off Airplane
By 5.4.09
James says he got ejected from his United Airlines flight because he had a cold and some of the other passengers wigged out, fearful of becoming swine flu victims. His letter, and its surprise ending, inside…
Costco Fixes Customer's Botched Electronic Prescription
By 5.1.09
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.
By 5.1.09
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Sure, worry about your own health, you selfish prick. Farmers, on the other hand, are worried that you will spread swine flu to their pigs. [Reuters]
By 5.1.09
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The WSJ Health Blog is live blogging the CDC H1N1 flu update. [WSJ]
