Dear Caremark/CVS prescription services,
You have messed with the wrong uterus, which belongs to a furious young lady who has a blog that at least two or three people read regularly. I expect that this missive will engender deep dread, the kind you have when you think maybe you’ve lost someone else’s child in your care, or at least the kind you get when you have overdrawn your bank account in 17 increments of $3-$4 apiece.
Today, I went, as I do each month, to get my birth control from my friendly neighborhood pharmacy. This strategy — get birth control, take birth control, have condomless sex with boyfriend, remain un-pregnant — has worked for me through six years and five boyfriends. Until today, when you fucked it all up.
My friendly neighborhood pharmacy technician gave me a sad smile, and said they couldn’t fill it. Or they could, but I would need to pay full retail of $78, rather than my reasonable and usual $15. She had an 800 number for me to call, though it would bring me no help.
“Well, it looks like this is an upkeep prescription,” your sour-voiced phone representative told me. “So we can’t fill it. There is no override.” She went on to tell me that in the future, all of my birth control must be shipped from Caremark or CVS or whoever you are, to me. Maybe, she said hopefully, maybe they can send it real quick, like, tell them to express it, and I could pay extra, and it could arrive by Monday or Tuesday? And maybe I can get super pregnant, then have an abortion on your lawn, Caremark!
“This is my birth control,” I hissed over the phone, hoping that no one in the grocery store could hear me. “That won’t work.”
Fuck you, Caremark!
Real talk, Caremark: I don’t want to get pregnant. You don’t want me to get pregnant, because I’ll bet there’s all sorts of expensive drugs involved in that whole gross process, and then I would have a child that would, presumably at some point, have prescriptions to fill, and you seem to be in the business of not filling prescriptions. If I had known that you would require me to tell you that I wanted to continue my birth control, as I have for the past six years, and ask you nicely to send me some, then I would have. But you didn’t tell me, Caremark. So what the fuck am I going to do?
Obviously, I filled the prescription. I am not even going to mention here (except I am) how I had to wait in the pharmacy line three times to fulfill that goal, each time more exquisitely annoying than the last. My incredibly sweet friendly pretty smells like sunshine neighborhood pharmacy technician found me some discounts, so I only ended up paying $57. Only. For a generic prescription. One that — just guessing here — saves the company millions annually on … pre-natal Valium, or pre-natal cancer/HIV drugs, or whatever it is that pregnant women take.
But I want my money back. Each and every month, me and my company both pay you a lot of money for shitty coverage and shitty care. I have no recourse here, and no options. Health care is fucked, and if it’s this difficult for me — someone with a white-collar job — then I hate to think what it’s like for others.
Also, please send me a 180-supply of birth control, because I trust you not one bit to send it on time.
Blog Time Incorporated 