Prescription cards fail due to "computer glitch"

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Local Washington, DC news reported last night that Blue Cross/Blue Shield prescription cards are failing at local drug stores due to a "computer glitch" which cancelled the policies on Jan. 1, 1999. This means that if you go to fill an RX at your local drug store, you have to pay *full price* and get reimbursed later by the insurance company. Yikes! My RX costs $200+! Sounds like a roll-over problem to me. Any other insights? Any other areas experiencing this?

-- Libby Alexander (libbyalex@aol.com), January 02, 1999

Answers

This was reported on my local CBS station. (Huntsville, Alabama) Reporter stated it was Federal Employees only on a nation wide basis. I can't find anything on internet news sites.

-- S.Rathers (srathers@hotmail.com), January 02, 1999.

I had trouble with my prescription card a while back. wasn't y2k but it certainly was similiar situation. A real bum. Yes, you have to pay to get your prescription and work out problems with Ins co yourself.

-- Moore Dinty moore (not@thistime.com), January 02, 1999.

I also had trouble with prescriptions a few weeks back. They had to key some numbers in manually with a few other codes. Scary.

-- Dave (dave22@concentric.net), January 02, 1999.

Not just bluecross blueshield, a company called Caremark, too. Although, maybe they are a subsidiary??? Caremark, too, experienced a "computer glitch" misreading policy dates. Incidentally, the company handles more than just government employees...

-- Christine A. Newbie (vaganti01@aol.com), January 02, 1999.

My wife is a Pharmacist, and she said that now that her company is "supposedly working on Y2k compliance", her sattelite link to the mainframe that handles insurance coordination is MUCH less reliable. It used to crash once a week, but now it's 2-3 times a DAY. They'll never make it. :0

Yep, be ready to pay CASH only, and make damn sure that you have refills on the prescription, and keep a Xerox of the prescription and filled-on date. It's not a valid copy, but it helps them find it in the pile of incoming scripts (which they have to keep for years). Having a filled-on date makes all the difference when they have to look for the original.

This assumes that you can find an open pharmacy post Y2k. My wife is not going to come back in until things sort themselves out. If she came in earlier, I'd be with her plus rifle, armor, etc. to keep the unruly customers in line.

Ever see how bitchy sick people get? Multiply that by a factor of 10, and you know what she goes through in NORMAL times, let alone post Y2k when people's credit cards, insurance cards, etc don't work, and resupply is very uncertain.

-- Bill (billclo@hotmail.com), January 03, 1999.



Let's see .... it's not a Y2K problem, but started on 1/1/1999; affects cards nationally, and the symptom is 'cancelling" accounts.

Yeah right. It's starting........

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 04, 1999.


http://www.sundaytelegraph.com.au/

99 signified end of file for this Sweedish airport.

-- Dave (dave22@concentric.net), January 04, 1999.


I work at a 105k member HMO (Ops & EDI) and oddly enough, no fires yet, which is not what I expected.

-- Lisa (nomail@work.com), January 04, 1999.

The vast majority of group health insurance policies become effective on January 1 of any given year. This is also the time when a lot of vendors, for better or for worse, perform system upgrades, data conversions and the like. Put the two together, and you realize that 1/1/???? is the most likely time for all sorts of errors, not just Y2K and Y2k-like problems.

It could be stupidity, fat-finger syndrome, poor QA, lousy testing, failed processes that weren't restarted, all sorts of things. And with 1/1 being a holiday (and bumping up against a weekend this year) it is likely that major SNAFU's took days to be caught and/or corrected.

Such is life. Happens all the time. Get used to it.

-- Paul Neuhardt (neuhardt@ultranet.com), January 04, 1999.


Christine A. Newbie;

>>Not just bluecross blueshield, a company called Caremark, too. Although, maybe they are a subsidiary??? Caremark, too, experienced a "computer glitch" misreading policy dates. Incidentally, the company handles more than just government employees...<<

You got that one right. Especially a certain un-named but very large multi national corporation which saw fit to change my prescription service over to CareMark as of last Friday. JIT strikes again!

You really got to love it folks. Does it ever get any better than this?

S.O.B.

-- sweetolebob (La) (buffgun@hotmail.com), January 04, 1999.



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