Common Questions for Red Door Pharmacy
Some of the most common questions we receive are…
“Do you accept my insurance?”
The answer is almost always, “YES! We take that!” We even accept the insurance with another pharmacy’s name on it.
We are actually preferred on most insurance plans.
“So you take my insurance, but what will my copay be?”
Every insurance plan is different even if they are operated under one name. In order for us to know the copay, we must submit a prescription to the insurance company. The copays are almost always the same at all pharmacies. Sometimes we are even able to provide medications on our in house plan for less than your copay would be on insurance.
“My insurance says I have to use mail order. Can you still take care of my prescriptions?”
Absolutely! You simply call the number on the back of your pharmacy insurance card and tell them you want to fill your medications at your local pharmacy. Usually that is more of a scare tactic that the insurance company uses than anything else. They do this because they will typically have ownership in the mail order pharmacy and they are profiting more by creating a vertical monopoly. Mail order is slow, lacks customer service, and leaves your medication outside of the temperature range that it is supposed to be stored at which can affect the stability of the medication. Leaving medication in a mailbox in a hot Texas summer is never a good idea!
“My doctor wrote a prescription for a new medication and my insurance is asking for a PA. What is a PA?”
Oh the lovely “PA” or Prior Authorization request. Simply put, the medication is not on your insurance’s preferred medication list, also called their formulary. When this happens, the pharmacy sends the insurance’s request over to the doctor for further documentation. The doctor must explain to the insurance company why they are writing for this medication and why the insurance should pay the claim. It is then up to the insurance company if they are going to cover the medication. The pharmacy is really just the middle-man between the doctor and the insurance company. We will attempt to process the medication claim a couple of days after the initial attempt to find out if the insurance is going to pay and what the copay will be.