One employee's family recently found this out the hard way. The wife, a former County worker, needs Dexilant for acid reflux. Her husband, a diabetic who still works for the County, needs Januvia to keep his blood sugar under control. But their pharmacist is unable to fill their prescriptions. It keeps coming back as declined.
The wife, I'll call her Carol, called Executive brown today to complain. he was too busy to speak to her, and handed off the ball to a woman named Cathy. I presume that's Cathy Allen. The conversation went nowhere.
Upset, Carol told me she "could get stomach cancer" without that medication. But the person she is really concerned about is her husband.
"They're killing him," she charged.
"His blood sugar is going through the roof and now they're playing with his health. Diabetes is not something to mess with."
"An employee of twenty years and this is how you thank him?" she asked. She concluded that the Brown administration is "playing with people's lives."
Carol thinks this problem could go away if a doctor prepared a letter claiming that the prescriptions are "medically necessary." I thought that was the whole point of a prescription. But I wrote to the administration, asking someone to explain what option employees have when confronted by this problem. My email went to Brown, Allen and Director of Administration Luis Campos.
Not one of them has bothered to respond.
