The shell game is probably the world’s oldest confidence game, going back 2,000-3,000 years. You still see people getting lured into it in cities today.
It’s also played, albeit legally, in physician offices and pharmacies around the country.
You know, the ones piled up in your sample cabinet. Get a month free of Whateveritscalled to try and/or have your copay reduced to $0 or something reasonably low. All, of course, subject to terms and conditions in the small print and that of your insurance carrier. Your mileage may vary.
In my experience these things often don’t work as well as advertised. Sometimes it’s because the patient doesn’t understand how to use them, other times because their pharmacy doesn’t want to have anything to do with the cards, and still other times because their insurance has some exclusion against them.
Dr. Allan M. Block
But they do sometimes work ... until they don’t. Sometimes, out of the blue, they’ll stop. Maybe there was an insurance change, or the pharmacy policy changed, or the manufacturer’s program changed, or the offer expired. I usually don’t know and rarely find out.
So the shell game begins. The patients call multiple pharmacies, trying to find one that may be able to honor the coupons. Then they call my office and ask me to switch the script. So I do. They they go to the pharmacy. Sometimes they can get the script, sometimes not. If not, they move to another pharmacy and call my office to switch it again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Other times it’s more complicated. They want a new card for each try, so they show up at my office asking for one (usually they can be downloaded online so some try that. Others do both). Like pebbles under a shell, the prescriptions and cards get switched from pharmacy to pharmacy.
This isn’t exclusive to manufacturers’ copay cards. I see the same phenomenon with GoodRx and similar cost-saving programs. People move scripts around to find the best deal. It may be helping them, but it certainly doesn’t help me and my staff as we try to keep up, or the badly overworked pharmacy staff.
I’ve even had some patients take the audacious step of asking me to write a script in the name of their spouses so they can double their supply. Obviously, such requests are refused. I’m not going to play that game.
I understand new drugs are costly, and often outside the reach of many patients today. I know the manufacturers are trying to get their products tried, or even make them more affordable for those who need it.
But, in many cases, this becomes (unintentionally or intentionally; I’m not sure) a shell game. Legal, perhaps, but still equally frustrating for all of us who are trying to keep up with it.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.