Thread by @phylogenomics

Well, in case you missed it. Two weeks ago I posted about the disastrous and dangerous and incompetent new University of California pharmacy benefits "system" which warned me, two months after the fact, that they were cutting off coverage of my insulin 1/n

https://twitter.com/phylogenomics/status/1500934973775249412

This was, well, quite stressful and really poorly handled by UC. And the pharmacy benefits provider they had switched to - Navitus - was a true and epic disaster in many ways. 2/n

Clearly, this touched a nerve and 100s of people shared stories of how they were also harmed by the new UC system as well as by other switches in pharmacy benefits in their systems. 3/n

Some people in the responses pointed my to some contacts at @ucdavis they suggested I talk to about this and both the people I contacted were awesome. They helped and provided some details and also told me that UC was working on fixing some of the issues 4/n

Mind you, none of this should ever have happened in the 1st place - this was just a poor set of decisions to switch to a company and a pharmacy benefits plan apparently designed to save money by forcing costs and pain onto UC employees. 5/n

But at least they were trying to do something to back track the disaster. And yesterday I got an email with some details of their plan. I have posted the full text on my blog here phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2022/03/full-t… 6/n

And am going to also post screenshots to Twitter with alt text for those interested 7/n

Here is a screenshot of the full text - 8/n

And then zoomed in - part 1 9/n

Part 2 10/n

Part 3 11/n

Part 4 12/n

Part 5 13/n

Part 6 14/n

Part 7 15/n

Part 8 16/n

So - what does this all mean? I am not 100% sure but the first thing I take from this is that the UC did not due any type of due diligence in advance of this switch and rolled out something that was seriously damaging to many UC employees. 17/n

I think there probably needs to be some sort of investigation by the State of California into whether or not this rollout violated California insurance guidelines and laws 18/n

As for whether or not this will fix things? I think some of this will help but it remains to be seen whether or not anything will improve. There is still no commitment to actually cover drugs that Navitus says are not covered. That is disappointing 19/n

Basically they are offering "help" if your meds are not covered but the help they are offering is no commitment in any way to cover anything - pretty lame 20/n

And they have now brought in a consultant - UC alliance - to deal with denials of coverage. How about, rather than a consultant, which must cost money - the UC just covers more things and thus they can save money on the consultants? 21/n

And of course, the letter from UC ends with "Please do not reply to this message. Replies to this message are routed to an unmonitored mailbox. " There is apparently no way to contact anyone about this. No hotline. No email address. Nothing. What a joke. 22/n

So in the end, yes I am glad the UC is doing something here. And some of this will help people. But (1) the whole system really should be switched back to a better one w/ more coverage and (2) unclear how much impact these changes will have 23/n

Navitus disaster now covered by @calebmhampton: UC drug benefits switch leaves employees without coverage for crucial medicines davisenterprise.com/news/local/uc-… via @AllDENews

And check this out - in October UCOP posted about open enrollment link.ucop.edu/2021/10/18/ope… - umm no - not true - not remotely the same benefits a d as a bonus - you get to pay more

Well - good news for me - I have been told that Navitus has been instructed to cover the insulin I have been using. More coming soon when I get confirmation and details.

Also - would like to know if this is going to be done for other diabetics ... will try to find that out too.

And also - what about other people who had their Rx meds changed to not being covered -- would like to know what is going to happen there too