Plan 1 or plan 2??

My second job in trucking was a flat salary. They sold it to me as a dedicated run between northern California and Texas then back home for $64,000 a year. Employee medical was paid 50% for employee and nothing for dependents. Within 2 weeks of starting I was taking loads to Colorado and unloading 22 one ton pallets with a manual jack then going to Texas for a load home. Long story short, I was driving 11 hours a day, 6 days a week, then working 4-6 more hours a day loading and unloading my trailer. On top of that, even though they were paying half of my medical, the dependent portion and the half of mine was costing almost $900 a month. I lasted 6 months before burning out and getting a much better job.

My next job was a flat $250 a day with full medical paid for 5 days a week. I was only driving 1,200 miles a week, and one of those days was sitting around a truck stop for 24 hours. It was an easy job, but I'm doing my own thing now.

 

I submitted a simple bill to the Arkansas Medical Board.

One of my doctors did a very simple procedure that took 10 minutes with a staff of 6 to help him. All he did is stick a needle in 4 spots on my back assisted by sonogram to target particular nerves. 10 minutes 4 needle sticks. I remember the first big one as it cut one of my main nerves and was out for the next three.

The bill?

600 dollars fee for the visit.

1600 dollars a needle stick. 4 sticks total.

300 dollars for various other applicable codes.

1200 for the use of a sonogram machine. All of that in 10 minutes flat done and kicked out to be driven home.

$8500.

Insurance settled in full at 5000. I am to pay 60 because they are in a in network provider.

I canceled the next two surgical procedures and one massive 20,000 dollar MRI survey. Which pretty much guarantees that a particular major surgery on the back is never going to happen. Looking about 42000 dollars in total potential billing to insurance.

I refuse to be used as a mule. Hand me my medicines and leave me be.

 

This is the trickle down effect in reverse. Medical school costs are through the roof, everything in medicine including simple instrument costs are through the roof. Malpractice insurance is through the roof due to uninhibited legal litigation. Then they want to limit access to pain killers. Which is more cost effective to the consumer? Agony isn't an option.

 

Yea A car accident can cost 400,000 pretty quick, and that was only a week in the hospital and one helicopter ride, and then all the follow up visits that are naturally needed too.

 

Something the media doesn't like to talk about is the real cause of the opioid crisis. Deaths from prescription pain killers has actually gone down over the last decade. You only hear about it when a celebrity takes a ####tail of several different drugs with alcohol and dies. Then people scream for more control over the drugs. The real culprit killing average Americans is synthetic opioids like fentanyl smuggled in from Mexico. It's much cheaper than prescription opioids, easier to get and much more potent. This stuff is killing Americans by the tens of thousands and the media blames prescription drugs because they don't want to admit that we need a border wall or more border protection. Meanwhile the spotlight is on the drugs many Americans need and they're making it much more difficult to get them.

 

Well of course we can't have those mean racists be right can we?

 

Thats why I installed a 150gal tank. Now I have 300gals total, and fuel up on my off days. Cant deal with fuel lane slow-pokes

 

It's not just the spot light. My medical insurance denied a pain medicine refill combined with a valium refill. (The Val is off label to get at certain muscles that wont relax.) They just recently implemented that little rule internally so when I showed up to fill those two items (The other two were filled a few days ago) they ended up bypassing the insurance and make a retail sale of of it. CASH.

I'll have a converstation with the doctor in a few weeks to talk about refill dates on all 4 medicines. State requires 30 days in between refills. I could probably get him to add a few more doses to several so that the 30th day is not so crucial while i spend three days in three seperate visits to the pharmacy to fill all 4. It's stupid.

Because of the increasing restrictions the Pharmacy has begun to work with me and my doctor direct for cash money retail sales and bypass the insurance. My State does subsidize some of the cost. But only if Insurance pays first. It's a circle. We are going to get this sorted tomorrow on paper or more exactly by computer.

It really creates a BIG problem when insurance refuses a totally legal, proper and prescription order for a medicine refill. They end up causing the Pharmacist to be tied up at his computer while 30 people come in to get refills (6 of those were pain patients identified by the neon Yellow paper scrips with the notary seal imprint on the one corner)

I know that the State and the DEA wants to make sure that Pharmacies work hard to differentiate between a prescription for infection which is totally ordinary white or electronic submission from the doctor. And the narcotics prescriptions by law are strictly printed on bright neon colors that absolutely stands out in a pile of papers on the Pharmacy desk.

I tell you what else it does when handled carelessly by some people. It marks them for robbery try when they come back out with a bag of narcotics.

What I do with those papers is roll them up and stick it up the sleeve. The only time I turn that in is at the far corner where the Pharmacy has a question half desk. He is the only one that sees it when I hang arm beyond the cover of that wall and he takes the roll. No one except the staff counting pills see anything. And some of them are armed as well as I am too. So... I don't intend to be prey.

Walmart is the absolute worst when it comes to filling pain medicine of any kind. The one in our county insists absolutely insists on taking the script paper waving it over the head for the 40 people waiting behind me to see it and know instantly what it is It goes up to the opiate fill room by air tube. When the medicine comes back down, that pharmacist does the following.

Bags it. Carries it to me. Unpacks the medicines. Picks up the pain medicine and waves it all around like I am blind or something. Then in a louder voice gauranteed to be overheard by half the store now.. "SIR THIS YOU OXYCODONE PAIN NARCOTICS etc..." babble off the details for everyone's benefit.

Here I am concealed carry armed and paying for the #### thing and evaluating everyone who is evaluating me. The last time I did that I allowed my cover garment to print the bottom of the magazine in the holster. THAT put a instant end to the heavy eyeballing from the people in line. I let the manager know about this and my decision to take my near 1000 dollars a month in medicines at that time else where to some other lucky pharmacy.

You cannot even begin to understand the massive time lost just submitting a script to the moment you finally get a text message officially summons to the store to fill it. Some cases it takes three days. Longer if they have to special order it.

There is a pharmacy at the local hospital on the third floor. They do outside sales as well. It's up in the far corner of the building near a very well defensible stairwell. Very private too. Turn in scripts, wait a few minutes and hand over your money and go home with medicine. No fuss, no muss, no trouble. AND they USUALLY have everything you can think of with the ability to build a formulary in the next room by Mixing. Very good place to get medicines. Anyway, that's my little strategy anyhow.

 

Here is a explanation of that medicine to those who do not know about this.

Buprenorphine Sublingual and Buccal (opioid dependence): MedlinePlus Drug Information

Additional Information particularly in it's use specifically to get a patient broken or weaned from whatever drug that they are addicted to.

Buprenorphine | SAMHSA - Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

I myself spent a week in medical detox last october. They gave me suboxone for 5 days including two other medicines. One is to get the blood pressure below 100-60 from 235-150 and the second is simple vitamin b1 which my blood panel showed essentially completely missing. My weight at admission was 176 and I was not doing well food wise that month. Dietary essentially doubled the food loading 4 meals a day special to order and did a very good job. Under careful supervision from the doctor (The bed I was in was a scale, it knew my weight and was able to plot hourly weight gain to computer 24/7) I was back to my normal 195 in 5 days flat and gaining strength and power I did not have before.

I believe without that particular week in the hospital for the purposes of fighting blood pressure I would have stroked long ago and probably died for it or worse. Strokes are a regular killer in half of my relatives going back more than 100 years. The rest is either breast cancer (Including men) or respiratory failure to old age.) TB and Leukemia are also threats.

I had trouble with blood pressure before for trucking and was medically disqualified from getting a DOT medical card for 9 months one year until I changed my habits, food, and stopped drinking. The withdrawals from alcohol was literally raising my pressure that year. It was also the year I stopped drinking.

This is why they give BP readings to anyone taking pain management, when it is elevated, combined with a negative drug test, that means that patient is no longer in contract or in compliance with the treatment, having abused, diverted, sold or run out early than 30 days mandatory for whatever reasons, usually abuse or addiction.

Bupo as a medicine in the box at the Pharmacy is very very very expensive. It's about 800 dollars a month retail cost. There are other medicines in the same class but approaches Fentanyal in the chemical family for the purpose of fighting pain medicine addiction or illegal drug addiction, they are under similar names and approach 1500 in retail pricing per month.

Because I am allergic to Fent, and has demonstrated breathing failure among other reactions to that particular drug I consider it lethal to me in any dose. And that's the lawful legal medicine given for pain when it reaches a certain level equal to ternimal cancer patients which the doctors had me on twice. The first time I was on it a month no problems. The second set ended after the third day in the ER for reactions which threatened my breathing. It's a form of shock and can kill outright in a few minutes. (Trendlengburg position combined with oxygen and a medicine delivered in liquid form based on a chloride chemical salt type is designed to remove fent from inside the body really fast and protect your life by ending the reaction in a hour while you are tubed if necessary to live long enough for that medicine to halt the reaction to fent)

Illegal drugs are being flooded with Fent. The US Postal Service is a source of this. It is no problem for anyone with cash to order Fent overseas online and they specifically deliver to your house via the US Postal Service. This was valid until Feb 18th where Committee of Congress which controls the US Postal Service system in full decided to merge and combine US Postal Service facilities with US Customs and Border Protection plus DEA, Homeland Security and FBI as a single unit to interdict any and all packages coming in from known Pharmacy online shippers to American homes.

Arrests started in various states including Arkansas shortly after. It is no problem to see a mailed package off Fed Ex, UPS or whatever bulk mail carrier, run it through a conveyor belt against a computer scanning for known exporters or mailers of drugs. When a match is made, that package is opened. If drugs inside, the local police and FBI, Marshals are contacted within the hour with a warrant prefilled and ready to go to that person's house and arrest same. It's growing really fast and taking action to essentially end this inflow of illegal drugs bought without prescription via the US Post.

There is a local forum poster for our County who made the mistake of publicly broadcasting that she takes in drugs from the US Post office and does not have to go to her pain doctor for medicine anymore. It took less than a day for the SIU strike team to go in and arrest that person. boom done. Stopped. Ended.

Even the Principal of a middle school in a small town two days ago was arrested when her son and his friends did pot and drank beer at 18 years old inside her house with her knowledge and then proceeded to drive home after the party for a friend. All of them were arrested two days ago. It's a seriously big scandal right now in that little town. Both items are illegal because they are minor children and we are a dry county plus rec pot is not legal here. Combined with driving, those licenses are revoked and so on up the tree so to speak.

The Medicine war against people who are former pain patients who have been kicked off by their doctor and then turn to Heroin or similar drugs which is seriously cheap, easy to get and so on for a high that last 8 to 12 hours per snort, injection or whatever they get it into their bodies is way way stronger than pain medicine sold at the Pharmacy.

Arkansas Pharmacies report to the Drug Monitoring Program even one pill of anything schedule one through four that is prescribed to any person in real time in this state. This has been up and running for about 10 years now. The Police can access this information when they need to.

There is a National Database maintained where Pain doctors report a abusive, diversion, sales or other addicted patients. Such patients are declared into this special national database has lost the ability to legally be prescribed narcotics for life. If they should for example show up in a ER anywhere in the USA and claim acute pain they stand to be arrested on the spot when their names and social are run and the National Data base reports to the ER doc that this person has been branded and has a history of sales, abuse, addiction etc.

There are however a standard of care in which substitute medicines other than Narcotics are given when they do show up with a broken arm in a obvious acute pain etc. But they will not get to enjoy the narcotics that they seek legally.

Our war against illegal and abusers of legal drugs continue to evolve this year. Everyone has been involved in this. Even the insurance companies as I found out this last week. Certain medicines are not allowed by insurance to be filled or will be paid for by them when filled. Period. It does not matter to them that the doctor prescribed it, the state says it's legal to fill on the 30th day and the pharmacy is cleared to fill the prescription. The insurance will deny pain medicine and any other drug similar to it for that day.

It is getting close to a situation where coffee, sugar, smoking and so on will be banned. /sarcastic.