I, too, kept regular Medicare with Cigna part D. I live in a small town with two local pharmacies. Nearest town with chain pharmacies is 20 miles away. Got a letter from Cigna saying beginning 2024, they would no longer pay for meds filled at the local pharmacies. Well, thought I, we’ll just get a different insurance company for 2024. Went to medicare.gov. Before they show any plans, you have to pick your pharmacy. The page requests your zip code. Before you enter it, there’s a box that says 10 mile radius. As soon as I put in our zip code, that box changed to 25 miles. When I typed in the local pharmacies, it stated “zero pharmacies available”, and gave me instead, three chain pharmacies 20 miles away, or mail order pharmacies. This will, in effect, put both our local pharmacies out of business. I called our pharmacy, and they were unaware that this was happening. 20 miles may not seem like much, but that’s not the point. I should have the right to choose, plus my husband has cataracts, and I’m starting to get them, too. Plus, some people in town don’t drive, or have no car. We live in Oklahoma. Our idiot governor vetoed a bill a few years ago that would prevent insurance companies from denying patients to go to whatever pharmacy they waited. At the time, he actually said that CVS representatives convinced him that it would save patients money! The idiot! The legislature was supposed to pick it back up again, but apparently they haven’t.
This explains these weird ads I have been seeing where a guy pops into place and tells the woman where to get her scrip filled...
And I once needed a very hard-to-find prescription: CVS wanted to charge me 4× what we ended up getting it for.
The insurance companies think they will save money but the chain stores will just raise their prices...