This is disgusting. In the last year, prescription health insurance for MediCal (California) has shifted to a separate insurance company that is more of a pain to deal with. All over the counter prescriptions have to be of the store company brand and you have to get a special override from the insurance company if they are unable to acquire them after a long while. More recently, you seem to have to get prior authorization to even get over the counter prescriptions covered. Then once you get it, the pharmacy still won't have it, so you have to get an override. When that doesn't work, you have to shop around for pharmacies that carry your prescription in the covered brand. Repeat for each prescription. You don't have to go through all these hoops for non over the counter medications because they consider them more of a priority. The prior authorizations have taken up so much of the doctors' time that the specialists are avoiding patients other than for procedures. Nurse practitioners are seeing the patients for specialists and filling out the prior authorizations (or their manager) incomplete. That gets the patient started on the medications without them doing much work, but then the patients get denial letters for the prior authorization. The specialist refuses to fill out the paperwork correctly, and throws the patient under the bus with the paperwork and the paperwork gets dumped on their primary doctor. So because of this savings, the patient can't get their prescription and never sees an actual doctor when going to a specialist. I suggest some of this money saved get used to lock up these crazy people, that are mandating exploding expensive battery powered cars on everybody, in an insane asylum.