The Price Override: biting the hand that feeds you.
Pharmacy Chick would like to believe that the prices that the pharmacy charges to cash payers have been researched by a department of very smart people who have devised complicated formulas for each drug to remain competitve in every market. Either that or its a random collection of prices set by a bunch of drunk executives trying to justify their existence. Lately I am leaning towards the “drunk executives”.
When some poor (literally) soul without insurance comes in with a clindamycin 150 #56 2 TID, my cost is something like $4-6 dollars. The price to the customer comes out at $70+. I suspect this goes back to the pricing schedule based on a percentage of the brand. Brand Cleocin would be at least twice that, so $70 is still a great savings over the brand. Regardless, if you dont have any money, $70 is as out of reach as that Astin Martin I saw in the parking lot.
I usually try to encourage the uninsured to at least obtain some kind of discount plan, preferably a free one. (why should a PBM make money for nothing?) Not all do and Pharmacy Chick gets to make a decision: Charge the full price and hope they dont balk and leave, or sell it competitively to keep the sale.
Therefore, I will occasionally give somebody a break on these one-timers. I try not to override prices on monthly rx’s because it means somebody has to remember to do it every month, and invariably it will get forgotten. Then something weird happens: the customer who was oh-so-grateful for Chick’s price reduction, now considers it an entitlement and gets indignant and pissy when this price reduction is accidentally forgotten. It happened enough times that I have decided its not an exception. By bad luck or fate, these special cases always seem to show up when relief pharmacists or techs or on duty. They either don’t notice or don’t care that the price is different.
I had one today but it wasn’t my own price override. I had a transfer from within our own company. The retail price was $21. It was a non-covered item. She bristled at the counter when the tech rang her up. Apparently the pharmacist at the original store sold it to her for $10 and neglected to tell us that when we did the transfer. Her pissy attitude put me off right away. “He apparently gave you some kind of special deal, because this is the standard retail price.” I told her and offered to call to find out what he had been doing. We obtained the information, decided to grant her the same offer and redid the rx. The ungrateful wench grabbed her bag and walked off muttering something about getting ripped off.
The Tech was pissed because she was the one who did all the work. “You’d think she might be grateful we agreed to charge the same price…we didn’t have to.” she said. I agreed with her on that one. I just told her that some people look their gift horses in the mouth.
Thought for the day: No good deed goes unpunished.
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