Tuesday, January 26, 2010

kaiser scorecard

26 days in

+1
i've been having weird heart palpitations for the past few months. i've attributed them to stress, but i have mentioned them to doctors and been told it's nothing and not to worry. so i haven't worried.

i went to kaiser and was talking to the asthma doctor re: my medicines. she said, "now you know the warnings about advair?" "no, please fill me in." well, apparently advair is an old drug- qvar, with an extra ingredient for god knows what. the extra ingredient causes heart problems in some people, and has caused the FDA to put it on their "black list" ( or something like that) as the last level of watch before they pull a drug from the market. i said, "so why don't i just take the qvar?" i've been on it for 2 weeks now, and the heart palpitations have all but gone away. double bonus- qvar - $10 for 3 months. advair - $10 for 1 month. neither of the other 2 doctors who prescribed it to me told me about the FDA warnings.

+1
every visit has been $15 so far. and so far no follow up bills. knock on wood.

-1
so far they only cover 5 migraine pills a month. this could be a real problem. granted imitrex has gone generic now and if i have to shell out $150 for an extra 9 out of pocket, maybe i can, but it won't be fun. my last insurance covered 18 pills a month.

-1
it can take awhile to get an appointment. i started trying to get an appointment with a neurologist (to get migraine medicine) at the beginning of the year, and the first available is feb. 11. this is when i can talk to someone about re-evaluating the number of migraine pills i get, and also whether i can get botox covered. if i can't, i'll get my dermatologist to do botox. i'm actually not excited about my face being frozen. but i've had at best a low level migraine 60% of the time (i'm attributing it to stress) for months and something needs to be done.

so right now they're at zero.

but when i think of the $1200 asthma doctor bill i still haven't paid off, i feel like they should be at plus 40. i was going to start saving money for a trip to ireland, but i feel like i should put that off til the $1200 is paid off.

2 comments:

soniasax said...

woah, scary about the advair.

that length of time for waiting for an appointment is the same in my network. i dislike it, but the doctors have been so helpful to me, i tell myself it's worth it. i hope you have more good experiences with them. and i hope you get less migraines!

Elaine said...

i hate that appointments take too long, but that copay is great.

and 5 migraine pills a month is kind of harsh. hopefully you won't need them as much.