Battling the insurance company....

On a weekend day, my son came down with strep throat. He was miserable! The trip to the after-care doctor went smoothly, they called in a prescription to the pharmacy close to home that we have used for years. This is where the nightmare began! My husbands insurance through his job requires a HUGE family deductible before the employer starts paying. We met that ridiculous deductible by using a flexible spending account. Any time we needed to pay for co-pays or prescriptions we used our flexible spending account card (fsa). So what is supposed to happen next is that the employers contribution card kicks in. But of course, on a weekend it didn't kick in. My option was to fight with the company who holds the card or pay out of pocket $127.00!!!! So I opted to try and fight the company for an hour or two. You can't get through to a live person - you have to leave a message. Eight messages later, no one called back. We finally decided that we needed to scrounge up the money to pay out of pocket then fight for reimbursement later. Go to the pharmacy - they are closed! Figures! Called the insurance company and prescription company (yes they are separate) and tried to get the prescription at another pharmacy.....strings, strings, strings! They would have to void out the first prescription because it was filled already (yeah like I'm really in the market for a double dose of antibiotics!). Then we would have to call the pediatrician to call in another prescription at another pharmacy. Oh wait, we have to find one that's open on Sunday at 9pm! Then we would have to call the prescription company back for approval, and so on and so forth. We we literally on the phone for more than 5 hours - and sadly nothing can get done until 8am Monday morning. Do these big companies care that my son feels terrible? No they don't.