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USPS says it wants to save $3 billion a year. Some rural mail delivery could get slower.
(www.cbsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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As a cancer patient, I have to say: This is fucked.
I'm not an old person yet, but I already have one old person issue: I have a specialized drug that I need to stay alive, that is also only available via mailorder.
Tons of elderly have a fuckton of medications just like that. All of them only available from specialized pharmacies that only are available by mail order.
This will kill people waiting to get life saving medications. That is all.
And also because of the ridiculousness of controlled substances, you can't just order ahead for, say, 2 months of buffer that could negate the risk of delays.
Because people can't be trusted with too much medicine. Like everyone's going to OD on cancer drugs or something if they don't ration it out to the day.
I have this problem. My doctor tried to get me 2 months of my medication and the pharmacist said, "yOuR iNsUrAnCe DoEsN't clCoVeR tHaT." Ain't painkillers or anything, literally my drug to keep me alive. If I wanted to OD theres a lot of easier drugs you could get without a pharmacist.
I have 3.5 cats on the same medication (0.5 cat is shared custody we watch sometimes). Juggling 4 prescriptions is a pain in the ass. Life would be much simpler if we could just get a Costco sized bottle of it and be good for half a year or more. For a medication that is very commonly prescribed for elderly cats.
I wholeheartedly agree. We could get prescribed years of medication, because the expiration date on medication isn't even true.
Also, insurance doesn't care if you are almost out and it will take three weeks to get there. Sorry, we can't authorize payment for another ten days!
I'd never want to have life-saving meds sent through the USPS.
You can get specialized services for shipping pharmaceuticals to your pharmacy, like what FedEx offers..
The pharmacy in question is CVS Specialty, and they already offer shipping direct to a local pharmacy.
That doesn't really change the calculus that if it is sent via USPS, and USPS has slowdowns, that it may take dangerously too long to arrive.
They don't really let you choose what partner they're going to ship with, so it's a "you get what you get" situation and I can't ask for FedEx specifically if I wanted it. They ship with whatever's cheapest to them at a given time.
That's a real shame, really.
Perhaps this threat of mail slowdown will prompt CVS to use other providers. I can't imagine they'll want to jeopardize their customer's health and safety by using an unreliable and slow method of shipping critical medication.
Resorting to a private service because USPS is prevented from doing its job is exactly what the saboteurs want.
Saboteurs, IE Republicans.