Meds By Mail

[broncovet]

Meds by mail:

Does everyone get this is rationing care for homeless Vets? Since homeless Vets dont often have an address, how are they gonna get their meds mailed to them? At my VA "meds by mail" is not optional! You can not get refills at my VA...the best you could hope for is 10 days...and the rest "by mail".

T bird recently voiced her frustration with getting meds..winding up in the Emergency room. Jim pointed out that at least one medical center requires Vets "call in" their refills, where they are greeted by an answering machine. Even worse, that answering machine gets "turned off" at 4 pm. I guess even answering machines need time off, too.

This means our poorest (homeless Vets) are not getting the meds they need (not to mention the rest of us!).

[Berta]

Good point. It is along the lines of what our radio show here today will be about.

It would be great to get some call ins. I dont think I can be there....

Edited October 15, 2014 by Berta

[john999]

Getting opiates, or even things like clonzepam are getting more difficult. I am going to wean myself off all this junk. There is no VA treatment for chronic pain disorder that does not do more harm than good. This is my experience after ten years of using VA pain clinics, and having PCP helping me. Every other service at the VA frowns on my use of VA prescribed opiates and clonzepam. Of course, these are the things I most use the VA for anyway. I asked for something to treat my narcolepsy and they refused. I turned to private sector. If you have good private insurance and use mail order pharmacy you can get expensive drugs cheap as in CareMark.

[broncovet]

John also has a good point...many times the "cure" (medications) is worse than the disease, so sometimes it is not all that bad to not be able to get your meds! However, I am certain some of them are very necessary...even life saving.

Abuse of prescription pain meds is becoming epidemic.

I called to refill Vicodin, and the doc sent me a letter to take a urine test before he refills. Now that is one of the first good common sense things I have seen come out of the VA....requiring a urine test before filling a prescription for narcotic pain killers. This should remove doubts...are you getting this refilled at multiple docs and abusing it? Of course, I am not..I only take it on a pain "flare up"....but I do have flare ups, and I dont know when they will happen. I will happily submit to a drug screen urine test, but I am aware of sometimes there being a "false positive". Still, I do think these screens are reliable and underused.

This (urine screen before narcotic presctions) seems to make good sense to me, but, sometimes "the devil is in the details". I did read a few years ago how the VA has something like a billion dollars worth of drugs that "disappear" each year. This makes me think this has to be fraud inside the VA..that is the only way this could happen..

[Pete53]

VA Pharmacy sucks

[Notorious Kelly]

When I was traveling meds by mail was huge hassle. Try getting meds at general Delivery.

Leaving Tucson I didn't want to stop at Walgreens to pick up prescription that had been called in there.

When i got to Santa Fe, that Walgreens got on computer and gave me my pills in minutes.

You can't tell me VA is anywhere near the level of civilain care.