Brown bagging chemotherapy drugs

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  • Annabelle41415
    Annabelle41415 Member Posts: 6,742 Member
    #22
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    Terrible
    Never heard of anyone ever being able to bring your own chemo, heck who were you supposed to buy it from, it's not like you can get it at a pharmacy. Good luck and hope things work out.

    Kim
  • tanstaafl
    tanstaafl Member Posts: 1,313 Member
    #23
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    Annabelle41415 said:

    Terrible
    Never heard of anyone ever being able to bring your own chemo, heck who were you supposed to buy it from, it's not like you can get it at a pharmacy. Good luck and hope things work out.

    Kim

    BYOB
    Outside the US, pick up at the pharmacy, home delivery and bulk buying with minor stockpiling at home, are not so unfamiliar. In the US, over tight prescription laws have led to oncologists' ruinously expensive "chemo concession", lack of competitve or special choices, and now life threatening shortages.

    No matter how bland the reassurance, skipping treatment components or whole treatments is not good. Switching directly from 5FU-LV to Xeloda has an extra risk factor just because of the body chemistry change with leucovorin and Xeloda.

    Push comes to shove, 90+ days of many supplies at max dose are a plane ticket away. I only consider the timing.
  • tko683
    tko683 Member Posts: 264 Member
    #24
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    abrub said:

    Agree - billed amount does not mean amount paid to
    insurance company.

    However, one disadvantage to self-insured companies is that they need the funds to pay all their claims. While they will use a major insurer to manage and negotiate for them (find in-network providers, et al) when push comes to shove, the company, not the insurer, pays out the claims from its own pot. When the money runs out, the insurance runs dry - for everyone in the company (we've seen this happen.)

    As a note, for anyone whose company is self-insured, be sure to get your claims in as quickly as possible, because when the pot runs dry, they stop paying. It doesn't matter that your claim was dated 3 months ago, and someone else had a claim paid for an event 2 weeks ago. It's strictly a matter of if there is money to pay your claim when you submit it.

    Wow, that is scary...
    I never thought that they could just run out of money to pay claims.....that is a huge worry....so how do you find out how much money they have in this fund......do you just hope and wait that they can pay the claims??? It sounds like I need to go find a full time job with good benefits quickly.....
  • abrub
    abrub Member Posts: 2,174 Member
    #25
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    tko683 said:

    Wow, that is scary...
    I never thought that they could just run out of money to pay claims.....that is a huge worry....so how do you find out how much money they have in this fund......do you just hope and wait that they can pay the claims??? It sounds like I need to go find a full time job with good benefits quickly.....

    Unfortunately, that's what being self-insured is.
    However, in order to be self-insured, a company must prove to their department of insurance that they have the resources to comfortably handle likely need/demand. However, with the financial crises of the past few years, depending on investment strategies, the monies may not hold. Your company is running scared at the huge expenses your care represents. However, also remember that a med center's bill for $47000 is their billed amount only. Most insurers have an agreement to pay only pre-set amount that will have been negotiated before. An in-network provider must accept the contracted amount no matter how much less it is than the billed amount, and for in network, cannot bill you the balance.

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