Wednesday letters: Law makes it hard to get medicine

My wife takes prescribed oxycodone-acetaminophen 5-325 daily for pain. It has to have a new prescription every 30 days. She had a radio-frequency ablation procedure on March 25. The doctor who performed it, different from our primary physician, prescribed this same medication for her to have extra available over the next seven to 10 days for any resulting pain. Makes sense, right?

But on March 26, the people at our CVS told me they couldn’t fill that prescription. I thought it was because of our insurance, but they said it was because of the controlled-substance laws. That medication can’t be dispensed again before the end of the 30-day period from the last prescription. But if the doctor wanted to prescribe something else, even something stronger, they could fill that. Makes sense, right?

Is that really the intent? Was the drug store wrong? Have other people had this problem?

Columbia

This story was originally published April 7, 2015 at 7:30 PM with the headline "Wednesday letters: Law makes it hard to get medicine."