Some states have laws that force insurance carriers to pay for maintenance medicine in the amounts the doctor prescribes, rather than one month at a time. That means the patient pays one deductible for a six month prescription rather than six. Most HMOs allow three months only if it’s done through their hand picked mail order pharmacy (did someone say "kickback") and in my experience these mail order pharmacies inevitably screw the prescription up.

Does anyone have any added information about this subject? I’m thinking of researching it and listing the states that protect people needing maintenance medication and possibly trying to lobby my own state into changing their law.

Examples of forced mail order prescriptions screwing up the prescription would help, too.

For example when we tried to order solu-Cortef they sent the wrong strength, and just the powder, not the solu-Cortef. That was not what the doctor prescribed, and it took weeks to get it in the first place. I went to out local pharmacy and got the prescription filled in a day, correctly, but I had to pay cash.

We’ve been paying cash for the Cortef because we don’t trust the mail order company and the co-pays would have been almost as much as what we are paying in cash, and we’d have to call the pharmacy each time, wait for them to get the Cortef in and then go pick it up. Basically spend three hours to save $5.