Mandatory mail order begins for Tricare seniors

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/03/22/3110172/mandatory-mail-order-begins-for.html

Mandatory mail order begins for Tricare seniors
By TOM PHILPOTT
Contributing Writer
March 22, 2014

About 500,000 military beneficiaries age 65 and older with chronic health conditions are being forced, starting this month, to have maintenance drug prescriptions filled by mail order rather than in local retail pharmacies.

The Tricare For Life Home Delivery pilot is a yearlong program required by law. Defense Department health officials project it will save the government $120 million per year in retail drug costs and save beneficiaries $28 million a year in lower drug co-payments.

By the time the pilot program ends, officials project that 95 percent of beneficiaries forced to use home delivery will be so satisfied with the convenience and savings they will stay with mail order voluntarily rather than return to neighborhood druggists for the kinds of medicines they will have to take for the rest of their lives.

“We are making it easier to stay,” said Rear Adm. Thomas J. McGinnis, chief of pharmaceutical operations for the Defense Health Agency.

[enlightenment]

1. My parents absolutely loved

the mail-order program. Not only did they not have to worry about getting to a pharmacy, they were able to get larger quantities of their medications. Instead of 30 days, they usually got a 60 (sometimes 90) day supply.
My dad had cancer the last eight years of his life, treated with Gleevec - that was a once-a-day pill. Came in the mail and not one time was it ever late.
Drugs that needed to be refrigerated arrived in individual Styrofoam containers, packed with cold packs, usually within 48 hours of ordering.

If they had a transitory illness - a respiratory infection or such - we took their prescriptions to local pharmacies, but for the regular meds (and between them, they took about eight different kinds), mail-order was the process.

I think the Admiral is right; once people realize how it works, they'll be very happy with mail order.

[RGinNJ]

2. I use it and it works great for my everyday drugs.

I get 3 months at a time for the same price of 1month at my Cvs, and the drugs come to me.

[SheilaT]

3. I have a Senior friend who

is simply on Medicare, and her daughter got her set up to get all of her regular meds in the mail and she just loves it. Makes a whole lot of sense to me.