Another Victim Of The Health Insurance Industry, Me Part I

I’ve been taking Ortho Tri-Cyclen Low birth control since as long as I can remember. I started taking it probably in 1998 to help regulate things. In college, I didn’t have the privilege of having health insurance so I relied on Planned Parenthood to supply me and to give me my yearly check up.

Since I got a job, I’ve had CareFirst Blue Cross, which, up until a month ago has been pretty good. I was able to get the prescription with ease and it was cheap.

A few months ago I had to switch my plan since the POS plan got way too expensive. I switched to the cheaper plan. It required me to fill out a bunch of forms to do simple stuff that the POS used to do automatically (like paying the doctors). I now have this card I use.

The problem I’m having with them is that they changed my birth control on me. I order from Walgreen’s Online Pharmacy, so my prescription is shipped to me. My doctor prescribes me the name brand (Ortho Tri-Cyclen Low) since it’s what I’m used to and what I’ve been taking for years.

Being name brand is more expensive for my insurance company so they took it upon themselves to switch me to the generic version WITHOUT TELLING ME. It’s their policy that if there is a generic form of the prescription, they have to dispense it rather than the name brand.

Much to my surprise when I got my prescription in the mail, it was stuff I haven’t even heard of. I asked my doctor, I asked anyone I could think of who would know if this changed anything. They basically all said no.

However, I found out last month when I started taking it that it wasn’t the same. I got sick. It also didn’t have the same effect that the name brand had. I don’t want to be gross in a blog post, but let’s just say a lot of weird things happened.

Now I’m faced with… well… weird things still happening. I called my doctor. He’s going to try to talk to CareFirst to tell them to put me back on Ortho Tri-Cyclen Low… not that it should be their decision but that’s the kind of health care system we have in this country.